My Immigrant Dad Never Said ‘I Love You.’ He Just Worked.

(The Real Reason I Still Keep Going Even When It Feels Pointless)Real work. The kind that doesn’t show up on social media. The kind that doesn’t get recognized, that feels invisible—until it doesn’t.I come from a family of immigrants. My dad’s family moved from Poland in the 1930s and ended up in the far north of Canada. They were homesteaders—settling into this cold, isolated place that couldn’t have been more different from what they left behind.They didn’t speak the language. They didn’t have money. But they knew how to work. And they knew that if they didn’t figure it out, no one else would do it for them.My dad wasn’t someone who gave advice. He wasn’t the kind of guy to sit you down and say, “Here’s what matters.” He just did it. He just worked.He did shift work—two days on, two days off, three days on, three days off—for decades. And even on his days off, he’d wake up, eat something quick, and go right back outside to work on something. He was always fixing things. Always building something. Always moving.And that was our normal. Nobody in our house paid someone to fix anything. If the car broke down, he’d fix it in the garage. If the dishwasher broke, he’d take it apart. If something needed to be built, we built it. That’s just what you did.Everything in our house was DIY. Because we didn’t have another option.There were six kids. We didn’t have much. But we knew how to work and how to save. That’s what we were taught.And here’s where it gets complicated.Because now—after going through school, getting a PhD, becoming a professor, building this R3ciprocity Project—I see the world so differently. I’m in a totally different space than my parents were. And yet…That mindset is still with me. That constant drive to work. To build. To keep going even when it feels pointless.Day after day. When no one’s watching. When the results aren’t coming in. When you’re not sure it’s ever going to pay off.I’m building something that I can’t fully explain. And every single day I have to remind myself: just show up. Just keep doing the work.You don’t need clarity to keep going. You just need courage.You just need to get up and try again tomorrow.Because here’s what I’ve learned watching my parents, and especially my dad: faith isn’t about having all the answers. Faith is what you do when you don’t have the answers. When the future is completely unclear and you do the work anyway.There’s a kind of quiet resilience in people who just keep going—who don’t wait for permission, or praise, or proof.I still remember how quiet he was. How much he worked. How much he provided for us without ever needing to be seen.And now I get it. Now that I’m a dad, and I’m building something that feels impossible most days—I get it.You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to be efficient. You just need to show up.