The Model Family

My family is far from perfect, and out of the three of us, I am definitely the weakest link in the short chain. And, as much as I am in awe of our daughter, she may only be awesome in our eyes and other people, don't find her special at all. Or at least, when I talk of her, they think I am just another doting father, blinded by sentimental attachment and sunk cost.

I am okay with it.

I don't expect people to understand how great Smallsteps is, because they don't know her. Nor do I expect them to agree with the way we have chosen to raise her, for which we get plenty of looks over when we describe how little digital interaction she has and, how much time we spend with her playing word and number games.

But is it enough?

Unlikely.

We can't predict what the future is going to hold for us, let alone for Smallsteps in what will hopefully be a long an rewarding life ahead and well past our own time on this earth. What I do know is that while the world is changing, culture is changing and the rules of interaction are changing - cognitive ability, emotional strength and resilience, as well as the drive to make an attempt are still going to be valuable.

A good life doesn't mean an easy life and often, an easy life tends to get very difficult, very fast, as those acts of convenience stack up and influence outcomes in unforeseen areas.

"You don't need that much money!"

Tell that to a parent with a sick child who needs treatment that they can't afford.

What is enough?

How long is a piece of string?

It is because of this very issue above that I started on Hive in the first place, as we had expenses that weren't covered by the healthcare system for Smallsteps, my wife was barely working due to complications in birth and I am foreigner running a small business that was just making ends meet, with only a couple hours of broken sleep spread throughout the day.

And while Hive added nothing financial to the solution, what it did do was bring in new perspectives and a type of energy that completely shifted the way I think about the world as a whole, and my place in it. As a result, it helped me realign my purpose, adjust into a new meaning and meet the necessities we faced, regardless of how bad I felt at the time. With a shift in mindset, even the hardest moments, were bearable.

Resilience.

But life is unyielding and relentless. It keeps on marching on and at least in my experience, I don't feel that I am living a charmed life where I am able to fall on my feet, it is more one where there are many falls, but I have to claw my way back, over and over.

Is this is the life I want for Smallsteps?

Not at all. But, there is power in having an adverse life also and, there is opportunity in not having it all go smoothly. Pain is a gift, if only if it is a reminder that there are better times too, and some of those may be ahead - whether that is true or not.

In a world of constant criticism and failure, lacking clear meaning, opportunity and support to find our gifts and excel, we are going to struggle. And if we do not have the mental resilience to rage against the dying of the light, we will slip into the night, giving up before ever discovering who we are.

All those Instagram filters on our smiling selfies, whilst youth depression and suicide rates climb.

The digital life.

Or is it the analog death? Perhaps that is what is happening as people move living into the cloud, into the non-embodiment of space to the point that they no longer recognize themselves in the mirror as they brush their teeth in the morning.

Who is that flawed person with uneven skin, dull eyes and a crooked smile staring back at me?

Body positivity. Be happy with yourself and change nothing, no matter how sick you feel and how it feels to buy clothes to hide away the flaws, the ones that real life cannot filter. Do nothing to improve your mental health so that reality is okay, flaws are okay, and whether fair or not - other people's judgements are okay.

What happened to "not caring what others think"?

Now, it is all about punishing their opinions whenever they hurt our feelings, whether the opinions are correct or not. It is emotional weakness - but we live in a global culture that celebrates the victims, not one that helps them become stronger. We incentivize victimization and reward it to the point that the world is now full of fake victims, doing it for attention filled with feigned sympathy, so that we can rake a perpetrator over the hot coals - whether they are guilty or not.

Anything to make us feel better about ourselves, by drawing our attention away from reflecting on our own shortcomings.

There is no such thing as the perfect family, but there is such a thing as spending too much time as a voyeur of the fake lives of others and, too much energy and effort sent on creating a fake version of ourselves - a caricature of an analog life, as imagined by an AI filter, by someone with no life experience, just assumptions about how life should be.

Princes, Princesses, Kings and Queens.

They are not real. They are the filters of the past that made people feel bad enough about themselves, that they were willing to work for undervalue in an attempt to get a little closer, a taste of the life of better people. The influencers of their time, as irrelevant then as they are today, but with the power to make us believe that they deserve their position of opulence, even if it comes at our expense.