What we live for

This weekend we went to G's cousin's wedding. It was a weekend filled with lots of family time which was lovely.  Today at lunch, G and I were rehashing the events of the weekend and we came across a comment that his uncle made about being parents.  He said, "If in the end our children are more successful than we are, if they do good things, then we've done good.  We've done a good job as parents."  Successful in the sense of successful in life as opposed to monetarily..or maybe both.

In any case, G's comment was, "Yeah, I agree.  I mean, isn't that what we live for?  Our children's happiness?"

And my response was, "Really?  I mean, as human beings do we live to have children and work towards their happiness?  Is that what makes us complete?"


Because at this point in my mind, I'm really thinking, I could find other ways of finding "completeness" without having had children.  Now that I do have a child, yes, my goal is to foster her compassion and passion...but I didn't have to have a child to feel complete was where my thought was going.

But G said, "No, I'm not saying that's why we have children. For me, I wanted children because childhood was so awesome that I wanted to have a child to share that awesomeness with her.  To rediscover all the specialness again as I experience everything with her."

I think that is just so beautiful.  Yes.  Childhood IS just so wonderful.  Just to see the beauty and wonder in everything and that G looks at it from that perspective just makes me love even him more and really inspires me to take more of that perspective.  Sometimes, I just don't have that whimsy in me...that sense of wonder...I should try to rediscover that myself.

And truly, because I have a child, I live for continuing to focus on being a better person so that my child can always look to me as her forever teacher (whether it's to avoid what I've done or to emulate).  I know I've learned a lot from my own mother and as she continues to grow, so do I.  There are definitely days where I just think this parenting thing is just so hard.  It's the hardest job I've ever had.  But, if I didn't have this child then I would never have spent so much time looking at myself and introspecting to be a better person - a better mom and thereby a better wife.  I know.  I was a wife without a child and I was not a good wife.  In a book I read, You are Your Child's First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin. it talks about being a good role model.  And that from day one, when that baby is born, she is absorbing every energy around her whether it's directed at her or not.  This is when I realized (when D was three years old) that as a mother, I need to make myself a good role model and to do so, besides being mindful of how I interact and communicate with my daughter, I need to adjust how I communicate with my husband (and basically everyone around me) because my daughter is taking in everything she observes.  Umm, missed the whole first three years of her life (which might be why she now screams a lot and has a terrible temper) BUT, she is still young and I can turn back the hands of time, can't I?  Make up for lost time?  We shall see...