Smallsteps has got unfortunately ill with a runny nose and a cough, so she is unable to go to daycare tomorrow and as a result, I will be home with her. It is going to be interesting as I have deliveries on Tuesday and Wednesday that I can't postpone, nor have someone else take, and my wife is starting her new job this week - Looks like it will be a bit of a mess.
It has been a month or so since we have been in this kind of a situation, so I guess we were due for it.
For the rest of the night, it looks like I will be sleeping on the couch to serve as blocker in case my daughter wakes up in the night, so she doesn't wake my wife up. It is kind of funny how all of the timing works, it is also funny what we end up doing in families to look after each other.
I think that one of the benefits of having a family is having a constant reminder of obligation and responsibility. For many, this might seem restrictive and constrictive, but it is actually quite freeing to be comfortable enough to be able to give to others, even at personal cost.
Not everyone will understand this perhaps, but we tend to have a scarcity mindset and we are often not overly charitable with our time. In a family, it isn't charity of course, it is duty and we feel bound to do our best for others and the reward comes from the sense of fulfilling our duty toward them. It gives a purpose to something external, but is also intimately linked to who we are.
Of course, there are other ways to experience this, but for me at least, the value of having a family has been enormous and while I have always had a pretty decent work ethic, it was nothing in comparison to what it has been since I have had people counting on me.
It has also made me think much further into the future and connected me with times where I am unlikely to even be alive, as I want to build the kind of world where my child can be happy and her happiness is going to be affected like mine, by the happiness of her children, if she happens to have any of her own.
This looking into the future has many facets to it and a lot of uncertainty as to what will arrive, but in general, it requires change from the current conditions to increase opportunity. While I might focus on the opportunity of my daughter personally, it also requires increasing opportunity across the board, as she will operate in an environment of many people, and her opportunity is going to be tied to the entire ecosystem in some way.
As they say, everything is connected, yet I also feel that a lot of the society we have set up makes us feel we are disconnected from everything. It is hard to find ground to cling to when we feel untethered, it is hard to connect our activity to anything of substance when we are floating.
For me, family is grounding and it is also empowering and uplifting, as it is a daily reminder as to why I do the things I do in the way that I do them. I am pretty sure that if I just had to look after myself, my tendency for procrastination would overpower my will to work eventually and I would end up doing the bare minimum to survive, rather all I can to thrive.
Life can be long and there are going to be plenty of ups and downs along the way, with a lot of average in between. But, a life without people close to us, people we want to share things with, makes the ups bland and the downs unbearable. No matter how much we have or what we are able to possess, the relationships we maintain is what is the most important indicator of our contentment in life. We are social animals, no matter how much we try to innovate our way out of it.
Anyway, This might give you something to think about or could just be a ramble in the dark, but whichever it is, I am going to put my head down on the couch now, as it seems that my daughter has fallen into a deeper sleep and I might be able to catch a couple hours before she wakes again.
Even though we try to hold it to one, life keeps no schedule.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
