My dad has always worked very hard, and imo, sometimes unproductively, like hardness for hardness's sake. He's finally retired this year after almost 50 years of continuous, blue collar shift work. And still, he was ashamed to retire, like it meant he was lazy, like it meant he wasn't giving back to the world anymore.

My dad especially but both my parents are exceptionally generous despite not having much and their generosity often causing meaningful sacrifice. It was a great lesson to me how much you can sacrifice and somehow still be more for it (if you don't let yourself sour over it).

But my favorite thing about my dad was how creative, handy, and self-sufficient he was. It was likely something he picked up from his dad, my grandfather, who everyone called The Engineer despite him not being a credentialed one. My dad did as much as he could of anything - car repairs, home repairs, building and crafting random things, whatever. Even this last year he broke his leg replacing his water heater - alone, not having done it before - after it fell on him. He taught me that you can just do shit.