Dear readers,
Today's post is a little self-indulgent, and for that I am sorry.
Still, I hope you will stick with me for just a minute, as I wish a happy birthday to the best man I ever knew.
In 1962, 61 years ago today, a little boy was born in Santa Clara, Cuba.
He was the first-born of two brothers to a large and very wealthy family of grocers, bankers, and government officials.
Born rich, he would grow up poor on the streets of Miami.
Around the age of four, he fled to America with his two parents and his baby brother from the new communist regime of Fidel Castro (pronounced Satan).
Though his family left their wealth behind, they stayed together and began their new life in The Land of the Free.
Raised in the Roman Catholic Church, he grew up with an immigrant’s sense of hard-work, fierce independence, and determinism. His destiny was his own to make — he did not require a “level playing field” to make something of himself.
He worked his way into Florida State, paid his own way through, and graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering. For the next 30 years, he worked at IBM as an engineer and a manager.
He eventually fell in love with a sharp-witted girl from New England, married her, and produced two demons that he managed to raise into semi-functioning human adults.
His name is Juan Yanes, and alongside my mother, I owe everything I am to him — to his selfless dedication to me and my sister.
The gifts of himself that he gave me can never be repaid. The sacrifices he made allowed me to live in total freedom, peace, and happiness.
That is a debt for which I will always be grateful, and which I can never repay.
In his tutelage, I learned the value of integrity, the pursuit of virtue, of self-respect, of a good humor, and of putting oneself “out-there.”
Along with my sister, he taught me the value of courage and believing in myself.
He never let me settle for less than excellence, and spent an enormous amount of energy curbing my natural inclination to arrogance and chaotic fantasy.
For his effort in that regard I am extremely grateful, however much of a hopeless enterprise it was.
To this day he is one of the most profound intellects I have ever personally encountered, and without his constant support for my intellectual pursuits, this little newsletter could never exist.
Though he is no longer able to read this little birthday note, I wanted to take just a moment of your day to say all the same —if you find any value in some of the words I’ve written, I take no credit for myself.
It belongs first to my Lord in Heaven, and then to all those who taught me the pursuit of the Good Life. They are the ones who are worth honoring.
Chief among them would be my father, Juan Yanes.
Finally, though I could never express in words my love for him, I will simply say —
Happy Birthday, Dad.
“‘Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, that your days may be long, and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you" - Deut 5:16
Wonderful. Dad would be proud.