Life is worth living
It’s so easy to get weighed down by problems or worrying. SO easy, in fact, that it will prevent you from REALLY living.
I seemed to blink my eyes and I have grown children. Children who don’t need me as much as they used to. I guess that is why parents do what they do… to create independent children who feel secure out in the world enough to practice living with the security of someone to help (me!) if needed.
Sometimes I find myself in the loop of wishing I had enjoyed times when they were younger more. I was trying to climb the corporate ladder and get attention from my work instead of the admiration I got at home. The thing is, yes, I do wish I lived more in the present raising children. AND raising children is not an easy task. I remember the endless instructions from school, seemingly last minute, requesting a white shirt for an activity the next day. What parent has white shirts for their kids?!?!? That seems like a death wish for the shirt. So, out I went, after a day full of taxing work, to take 2 trains and one bus to get to Target, only to find they don’t have white shirts for kids. Target and I were on the same wavelength. Life was great on the weekends with no work and precious time to play dress up and at the park all day with friends and pizza on a park bench.
One of the tasks was exhausting and the other was draining. Now that my kids are older, there are less of the draining tasks to take on. I took my son to an NBA game to see his favorite basketball player and we ate hamburgers on the hotel bed after the game while catching the highlights on TV, looking for ourselves in the crowd. That is living. I took my kids to see Bad Bunny a couple of months ago. For one of them it was their first concert and for the second kid it was her second concert. We had a blast. We got special outfits and we are still listening to Bad Bunny and remembering the highlights from the concert. It was a lot of fun. That is a memory we will have together forever.
A couple of years ago we took a cruise together. The cruise was 10 days and we had a lot of fun. If you ask them, they will tell you that the best part of the whole thing was ordering room service and watching movies together in our room. They loved going to the ship pub and eating tons of yummy food. We explored different islands we went to and even saw a baby hammerhead shark from the window as we were leaving the port. It was a lot of fun. Core memories. That’s what life is about. Core memories and the shit that fills in the rest of the time.
I think the biggest mistake humans make is thinking that life has to be all one or all of the other. If your life isn’t enjoyable all of the time, there is something wrong with you. Is your life enjoyable all of the time? For days and months on end, it’s great? No. I am sure there are times in there that it’s not fun. It’s because life is so full of all different things. Having kids is not enjoyable all of the time. I think them watching me roll through the punches of life gives them permission to do the same. Preparing our kids for fun all of the time is going to be nothing but a huge letdown when they find out that there are really shitty times too.
So I am dedicated to living a full life of fun times, core memories, and really shitty times too. It’s not always great. That’s just the truth. Life is messy and we are all just trying to get through it until we take our last breath. But one thing is for certain, you only get one life, might as well experience all of it instead of trying to avoid parts that are inevitable anyway.
