So I am going to radically transition from politics to a little bit of my life and views. I mentioned about a week ago that I am a soon to be father. At this point, I feel nothing but excitement, but to be perfectly honest, before my wife became pregnant, I had vastly different views about bringing a child into this world. Our soon to be child was a surprise, not expected, but my wife and I had discussed over the winter attempting to have a child about six months down the road. Well, about a month after our discussion, we found out she was pregnant. I guess our child didn't want to wait six months. But up until that discussion, and even during that discussion, I raised my concerns. The standard one that I think every father brings up at some point is that I was not ready, financially or otherwise. I came to realize, however, that I probably never would have been completely ready, so in a way I am glad that it happened like it did. My other concerns came, however, with the kind of world that we would be bringing a child into. After seeing society seemingly slide down the tubes a little more every year, apathy growing in every household in terms of child rearing and community involvement, and stability around the world faltering in every corner, I wondered why anyone would want to have a child and raise them in today's culture. To me it seemed as if everything was going wrong in the world and nothing was being done to address it. Whenever I looked around me, I saw little brats under the age of ten ordering their parents around, doning cell phones and the latests tech, and almost all of them carried around a personal gaming system so that not one minute of their lives would be filled with boredom. How would I be able to raise a child and have them succeed if everyone around them was behaving differently?
I think part of the issue I was experiencing was that I was seeking out the negative to support my reasoning for not bringing a child into the world. I neglected to see the small pockets of good that came around, the children that actually behaved and listened to their parents. There is good being done in the world, you just have to seek it out and unfortunately it seems much harder to find these days. A good part of my mentality could be that I never really looked around before at what was happening. I lived my life, heard the news, saw what went on, but never really took the time to see if everything that I heard was true or if I could find something good out there. So I felt trepidation, fear, unknowing at becoming a father in a day and age when the scales seem to be tipped against you. How was I to raise a child contrary to popular belief that the best punishment is sitting the child down and handing them a video game. I know that I wouldn't do that, but there were plenty of parents out there who did and how would my child react upon figuring out that their punishment was actual punishment as oppossed to other parents implied consent as their children's punishment was. But things change, people change, mentalities change. Did my view change in a split second after finding out my wife was pregnant? Absolutely not and I would be lying to say that I felt instantaneous joy upon finding out she was pregnant. In reality, it took a few days for the news to actually sink in and for me to wrap my head around the what was actually happening.
I had heard other parents say that you raise your child irregardless of society and the norms that they portray (these are parents I respect). It took me a while to grasp that notion and actually realize that a child's life fits into yours as oppossed to your life fitting into your child's. Put a little more simply, a child knows only what it learns and sees from its parents to start out with. If I can provide a good foundation for our child to grow off of, then that is all I can do. I have come to realize that despite what is happening in the world, a child knows nothing but their little insular world around them. Not until they reach their twenties do they start to fully grasp the fluctuations that happen in the world and are able to process them. The best I can do is give my child the tools it needs to process the world later, and live in the world now. Needless to say, my views have changed about bringing a child into this world. I no longer fear how well I will do as a father, I will just do it and raise our child to the best of our ability. The world will do what the world will do, society may be completely in the gutter by the time my child comes of age to deal with it, but I can only hope that I give my child the tools to change it and maybe drag society up a notch. Hopeful? Yes, but sometimes all we can be is hopeful. The only thing I hope for now, (despite an end to world conflicts, an end to hunger, a revived economy, and politicians who don't lie) is a healthy baby with ten fingers and ten toes (although if it had 12 fingers and 12 toes, I would be cool with that as well). Excitement is the name of the game now and I have no time to worry about the world, its vices, and its vitriol. The baby's room is done, furniture is put together, and I can now not wait to help usher a sparkling new life into this world.
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