Evie woke up yesterday from her post-shot nap feeling fabulous. I'm not kidding. She's all smiles and sunshine, all yesterday evening and through this morning. Amazing. Perhaps I should inject her with weakened live-viruses more often... (just kidding)
This morning while she was napping I was perusing babble.com and came across some thought provoking articles--too many to share, actually (but check out this one if you've got the time!). Through link clicking, however, I ended up at the personal blog of one of their contributors, The Happiest Mom. For all of you children-having-types, check it out for sure. That link is for an article entitled "WOHMs, WAHMs, SAHMs: who wins the “unhappiest” award?" and it hits home a topic that I've been mulling around for quite some time now--the fact that what is right for YOU, isn't right for EVERYONE and that simply because it's right for YOU doesn't make it better.
This thought, of course, doesn't just apply to parenting, but to just about aspect of life. I can't stand fish or ketchup, but I recognize that there's nothing fundamentally wrong about either. For many people, hanging out at the bar is their idea of a good time--I can think of few things I'd less like to do.
It's been an adjustment living in an Army community. Always before in my life I'd naturally gravitated to people with shared interests. Inevitably they understood me, because they were like-minded. In this community it's been something of a different story. I'm something of an oddball here--from my views on feminism to parenting to the way I enjoy spending my free time. I feel confident about what I believe until I'm face to face with someone looking at me with a distressed and pitying expression as I answer the "What have you been up to lately?" question. My idea of a good time is not theirs, and they worry for me, which I guess in a way is sweet. The only thing is, I feel the same baffled confusion over how they chose to spend their time, but I'm so in the minority I lose by default.
Of course the really incidious thing is that there are certain choices that probably are better than others. I think we all worry to some extent about the choices we make--as a parent, financially, spiritually, personally, etc. We seek to compare our choices with those around us, not out of some petty quest to put the other person in their place, but rather to gain a personal validation of the decision we've made and are hoping is the right choice.
Wow, all that before 10 am.
a girl, a guy, a tomato, a bean, and a bear
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
1 comments:
It is very true. I think that most decisions we make as parents, or women, or humans in general, don't have a single RIGHT answer that applies to everyone. We are not the same, so it stands to reason our choices would not be the same. I always try to keep that in mind when viewing someone else's life choices. They aren't me and their path is going to unfold differently in many ways. It doesn't make their choices any less valid.
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