“A Child is Father of the Man: The Forgotten Question of Who We Are”

A Child is Father of a Man: The Forgotten Question of Who We Are

“A child is father of a man.”

When I was a child, I read such quotes without understanding the meaning behind them. I am almost certain that most of us do the same—we see, we repeat, we move on, without ever really pausing to understand. Life drifts on autopilot. And before we truly live it, death comes to claim its share.

The Fear of Fatherhood

Becoming a father was one of the scariest steps of my life. I never felt ready. I doubted my strength, my ability, even my worthiness. In fact, I once wrote on this very blog about reasons not to have a child (https://www.rahulvut.com/2025/08/time-is-not-passing-we-are.html).

Yet life had other plans. And now, after 2.5 years with my son, I can say this: the experience is profound. His questions, his little observations, his sudden words of wonder—they break the monotony of otherwise ordinary days.

One day, I asked him: “Who are you?”
Without hesitation, he replied—with his name.

It was a light moment. But at night, when he was asleep, my mind kept returning to it.

The Illusion of Names

His name, the sound he clings to as his identity, was not his choice. It was mine. It was given. And the same is true for every human being on this earth.

If someone stripped us of our names, what answer would we give to the question: Who are you?

I asked myself: If my name had been different, would I have been a different person?
The answer was no. Which means our names—these labels we mistake for identity—are not foolproof. They are convenient, but they are not us.

That realization opened a deeper question: If not my name, then who am I really?

No answer came. Hours passed, and I kept circling the thought.

Then another question arose: why did names become such a central part of identification in the first place?

I imagined early humans, before language, struggling to call one another. Slowly, they developed sounds and symbols. A sound was attached to an object, a word to a person. Perhaps at first based on features, later on culture and tradition. Naming made life easier. It was useful.

But over time, people forgot that a name is just a word. The distance between the person and the label disappeared. The mask became the face. It was convenient too—it spared us the discomfort of asking deeper questions about identity, self, and being. Even false answers can silence curiosity.

The Death of Curiosity

Somehow, as a society, we stopped asking questions. Anyone who questions too much is seen as a troublemaker. To admit “I don’t know” hurts the image we carry of being all-knowing. So we react with anger, or we dismiss the question altogether.

Acceptance and conformity run deep in our psychology. For the sake of being accepted, most people stop asking. Worse—they even stop asking themselves.

Children, however, are different. They have not yet learned society’s rules. Their curiosity is natural, endless. They ask questions not because they want to rebel, but because they want to know.

And yet, I have seen time and again—parents frustrated, not because of the child’s questions, but because of their own lack of discovery. A child’s curiosity is too often met with shallow answers or even scolding.

This lack of self-awareness in parents keeps repeating across generations. Children grow into adults who stop questioning. They accept whatever they are told. They memorize it. They start believing that borrowed words are their own knowledge. In truth, it is knowledge fed to them by a system that does not want them to ask.

And so, life keeps moving on autopilot. Before realization comes, death steps in.

The Duty of a Father

Fatherhood has made me see this clearly. It is not my duty to fill my child with answers. It is my duty to protect his flame of curiosity. To guide him in the right direction, and then let him walk his path.

My son, in his innocence, has already done his part. With one simple answer—his name—he has forced me to ask again. To question illusions I had long accepted. To wonder: if I am not this name, then who am I?

Perhaps this is what the poet meant all along: “A child is father of the man.”
The child awakens the man in us who had long been asleep.

The Final Thought

Maybe the question “Who am I?” has no final answer. Maybe it is not meant to be answered, but to be lived with.

When death arrives, as it will for all of us, I do not want to meet it as one who lived in illusions. I want to meet it as one who at least had the courage to wonder.

My son has already done his part.

The rest is mine.

Just think over it.

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