Before we celebrate fathers, let's endeavour to understand them

A father is entrusted with children, values, relationships, and a future he may never fully see. [Courtesy]

Friends today is Father's Day!

Across Kenya and around the world, fathers will receive messages, phone calls, gifts, and warm wishes from those who love them. All of this is good and deserved. Yet as I reflected on this day, I found myself thinking less about celebrating fathers and more about understanding them.

There is a silent weight many fathers carry. It is the weight of school fees, rent, business pressures, loans, medical bills, aging parents, uncertain jobs, and the responsibility to provide hope even when they themselves worry about tomorrow. Many spend their days solving problems and making decisions that affect entire families, often without recognition.

The modern father faces pressures his grandfather never imagined. He is competing not only with the cost of living but also with comparison, social media, unrealistic expectations, and a world where children are influenced by countless voices. In many ways, he is trying not only to provide for his family but also to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world.

If fathers are honest, many carry on private conversations no one hears. They wonder whether they are doing enough and whether their sacrifices matter. Many quietly live with failed businesses, missed opportunities, and dreams that took a different path.

As I reflected on this year's Father's Day, I found myself thinking about my own father, whom we lost a few years ago. Like many sons and daughters, I occasionally wish I had asked one more question, listened a little longer, or spent more time with him. Perhaps one of life's quiet lessons is that we do not fully appreciate the value of shade until the tree is gone.

That reflection reminded me of a lesson I have learned from trees: we often enjoy the shade without understanding what the tree has endured. Through heat, wind, drought, and storms, it develops unseen roots before offering shade to others. Children play beneath it, travelers rest under it, and communities benefit from it, yet few pause to consider what it took to keep standing.

Fatherhood is often like that. Many fathers are like trees. People enjoy their shade but rarely notice their roots. They continue standing even when life has not unfolded the way they once imagined.

Yet Father's Day should not become a catalog of burdens. Many fathers achieve victories that rarely draw applause. Keeping a family together during difficult times is a victory. So are breaking a cycle of anger, overcoming addiction, learning to apologise, and choosing presence over pride.

In fact, some of the greatest fathers do not only plant blessings. They stop storms. They decide that bitterness, irresponsibility, and fatherless childhood will not be passed to the next generation. Sometimes the greatest shade a father creates is the storm that stops with him.

Fatherhood is far more than provision; it is stewardship. A father is entrusted with children, values, relationships, and a future he may never fully see. The greatest fathers spend their lives building things whose full benefits they may never enjoy. The true measure of a father is not what he accumulates but the shade he leaves behind.

When we discuss Kenya's future, we often speak about roads, jobs, technology, and investment. All of these matter. Yet every one of those conversations eventually reaches a child, and every child reaches a family. That is why fatherhood is not merely a private matter. It is one of the quiet foundations on which nations are built.

Today, therefore, let us thank the fathers who are still standing, still learning, still trying again, and still showing up even when nobody notices.

Somewhere in the future, a child, a family, a community, or even a nation will benefit from a decision a father makes today. They may never know his struggles or fully understand his sacrifices, but they will live in the shade he left behind. Think Green, Act Green.