Affleck Reflects On Imperfect Dad & Tender Mercies

Ben Affleck recently shared with WJS his views on “the gift of second chances” & learning from past failures, yet feeling grateful for having shared his Dad’s imperfect life. In a new film “The Tender Bar” the actor portrays a character “oddly close to his own redeemed alcoholic father. Seems it was the little things that turned out to be most important in molding the Big Ben we now see…

The movie is based on the best-selling memoir by J.R. Moehringer “in which he recounts how, largely abandoned by his own father, he found a world of loving, generous, sometimes cockeyed father figures in his uncle’s Long Island bar with Uncle Charlie the greatest of them. Without going in spoiler details, let’s just say most if not all of us, if we honestly, carefully review our lives, have similar saving Angels to point at. Some call it “mentors” or maybe “role models.” I recall my “wise” grandfather as one … and my “Knute Rockne-like” inspiring high school baseball coach.

But, just as importantly, Affleck suggested, the key to growing up may just depend as much if not more on recognizing the gifts of that imperfect & “sometimes” Dad; in the little things he did, wrong as well as right, to help mold the son into a better if also imperfect man in the end. Could it be that grateful son’s tender mercy makes him worthy of fond memories too?

Davd Soul