Ask any mom if they were happy before they had children and I'll bet they say yes. They had freedom, energy, creativity, and their youth was on their side. A few days before my daughter turned four, my mother said to me, "How is it possible that just four years ago you had no children?" That was a lifetime ago I thought. Four years, two kids ago I considered myself to be happy. I was a newly-wed, coping with being a cash poor home owner.
I was happy at the time. But from the moment my first child was born, I decided that happiness was a moving target and in fact, I didn't know just what my capacity for happiness was until I looked into the eyes of this tiny person that I had created. It's safe to say that I had no idea just what I was capable of until I had children.
I never knew just how much I could love another person. Despite losing my dad at a painfully young age, I didn't know until I became a mom just how much I stood to lose in this world. It is that ever painful reminder, that gaping hole that losing a parent creates in ones life, that reminds me nearly every second just what can be lost, without warning and without any regard for what I consider fair. It's the grindstone my emotions are constantly sharpened against. It's the reality we all know but seldom acknowledge, filtering in with painful clarity when a little blurriness is actually necessary to get through the every day routine of life.
When I was in high school, friends would ask me why I was single. That was the high school equivalent of being unhappy. The truth was that I never really cared to be in a relationship. I actually prefered to watch the high school melodrama unfold from the sidelines instead being caught in the web of adolescent romance whose rules and affections moved and changed with a swift breeze. Then in college, while wallowing in homesickness I did something I had never done before. I gave my number and a chance to a boy I had never seen before and didn't know at all. I don't think I could have imagined at 19 that he would be it - my whole notion of love and trust and the model relationship I never saw growing up.
Falling in love with my husband was to that point in my life, the single scariest thing I had ever experienced. It forced me to let go, be out of control, give someone this power over my happiness that I had somehow imagined to be the gesture of a weak person who didn't really think that they alone were all they needed to be happy. Falling in love turned out to be the mirror that I always wished I had. My husband allowed me to see in myself the person I always wished I was, the person I had been all along.
Tonight while driving home, I looked at my kids faces in the rear view mirror and I thought about how everything I believed about happiness now centers around them. They made me realize that I will do whatever it takes to spend as much time with them as I can because they define happiness for me now. The fact that Hannah and Jayden love me, depend on me, and because at this moment in time I can safely say that their happiness depends on me, I have defined happiness as being worthy of them. I owe it to them to pursue my dreams with passion because I have spent too much of my life thinking I didn't deserve to have all my dreams come true. I think that despite all my fears that my imperfections as a mother will somehow change them in a negative way, I know that I am one of the only people on this Earth that gets to make them smile and be the mirror that they need in order to see the amazing people that they are.
Being a mom has made it pretty clear to me, this one amazing truth, that happiness is not something I have the luxury of hoping will happen. I must make it happen.
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Monday, September 12, 2011
Friday, November 19, 2010
The Ultimate Unfairness of Fair
We try to teach our children to play fair with others because as our reasons demonstrate it's in their own best interests to do so. Would you want someone to take your toy from you? Would you want to play with someone who will not wait their turn? Would you want to play a game with someone who doesn't follow the rules? Who will want to play with you if you don't play fair? Well ideally, the answer would be no one. We teach them about fairness supposedly because it is in their best interests, but the reality is that they will grow up and go out into a world that is ultimately UNFAIR.
We tell them to do their best and that will be enough. We try to brace them for the reality that "you can't win them all." But what we don't tell them is that when they grow up, they will be living and competing in a world full of adults that simply didn't learn this lesson as a child or who simply disregarded the archaic idea that it was in their best interests to be fair. What to do? What to do? One day when we get frustrated enough we will tell them "Life is NOT FAIR. AND there is NOTHING we can do about it."
I have lived through plenty of loss, lies, betrayals, and broken promises to be the walking Poster Girl for UNFAIRNESS. I lost my dad at fourteen before I even had a chance to push him off the pedestal. I've worked for years for a promotion that was promised to me and ultimately denied and after fianlly quitting was doled out to a stranger free of charge. I work hard and at every pass am made to feel that my best is not good enough because mistakes carry more weight than good ideas and intentions.
For me, I have no choice but to be the good girl that I am. Somewhere way back in my past it must have been burned into my brain, or else we are born hardwired with the personality we have. In any case, being UNFAIR simply doesn't register as the thing to do. I'm not saying I'm perfect, oh I'm so the Poster Girl for UNPERFECTION as well if such a word existed. I have been angry, frustrated, disappointed and saddened by the UNFAIRNESS of life, but knowing my children will meet it head on one day scares me. Some part of me wonders if my training in FAIRNESS will leave them completely unprepared to survive in an UNFAIR world.
Should I be teaching them the truth; that people who put their needs first, who take short cuts, who simply don't care whose feelings get hurt or don't look back to see whose lives are left drowning in their wake are the ones who succeed in the UNFAIR "real" world? Am I dooming them to failure? The short answer is most definitely YES. But here comes my hard wiring again - I simply can't show them a roadmap that I don't have. I will probably never know what it means to have SUCCESS by life's standards. I have no grandiose notions of acquiring enough money not to give a crap about how I spend it or having strangers know my name and thinking that they perhaps know me too. Happiness for me, survival for me, depends on drowning these notions. These notions are simply not compatible with my brain.
I fear for my children like all parents do. We want to protect them from anything bad. We want them to be safe and happy and healthy and we tell ourselves that if we can just accomplish this holy trinity of parenting then life will be fine. It will open to them all the opportunities we never had. It will give them the happiness we dream for them. But the cynical me will always think in the back of my brain that life isn't going to GIVE them anything. They will simply have to TAKE IT for themselves. But my brain starts to overload at this juncture in thought because is TAKING what they want ULTIMATELY UNFAIR?
We tell them to do their best and that will be enough. We try to brace them for the reality that "you can't win them all." But what we don't tell them is that when they grow up, they will be living and competing in a world full of adults that simply didn't learn this lesson as a child or who simply disregarded the archaic idea that it was in their best interests to be fair. What to do? What to do? One day when we get frustrated enough we will tell them "Life is NOT FAIR. AND there is NOTHING we can do about it."
I have lived through plenty of loss, lies, betrayals, and broken promises to be the walking Poster Girl for UNFAIRNESS. I lost my dad at fourteen before I even had a chance to push him off the pedestal. I've worked for years for a promotion that was promised to me and ultimately denied and after fianlly quitting was doled out to a stranger free of charge. I work hard and at every pass am made to feel that my best is not good enough because mistakes carry more weight than good ideas and intentions.
For me, I have no choice but to be the good girl that I am. Somewhere way back in my past it must have been burned into my brain, or else we are born hardwired with the personality we have. In any case, being UNFAIR simply doesn't register as the thing to do. I'm not saying I'm perfect, oh I'm so the Poster Girl for UNPERFECTION as well if such a word existed. I have been angry, frustrated, disappointed and saddened by the UNFAIRNESS of life, but knowing my children will meet it head on one day scares me. Some part of me wonders if my training in FAIRNESS will leave them completely unprepared to survive in an UNFAIR world.
Should I be teaching them the truth; that people who put their needs first, who take short cuts, who simply don't care whose feelings get hurt or don't look back to see whose lives are left drowning in their wake are the ones who succeed in the UNFAIR "real" world? Am I dooming them to failure? The short answer is most definitely YES. But here comes my hard wiring again - I simply can't show them a roadmap that I don't have. I will probably never know what it means to have SUCCESS by life's standards. I have no grandiose notions of acquiring enough money not to give a crap about how I spend it or having strangers know my name and thinking that they perhaps know me too. Happiness for me, survival for me, depends on drowning these notions. These notions are simply not compatible with my brain.
I fear for my children like all parents do. We want to protect them from anything bad. We want them to be safe and happy and healthy and we tell ourselves that if we can just accomplish this holy trinity of parenting then life will be fine. It will open to them all the opportunities we never had. It will give them the happiness we dream for them. But the cynical me will always think in the back of my brain that life isn't going to GIVE them anything. They will simply have to TAKE IT for themselves. But my brain starts to overload at this juncture in thought because is TAKING what they want ULTIMATELY UNFAIR?
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