It was not like that when I was a little kid
“It was not like that when I was a little kid,” she said as I mused about life, sitting on the sofa with my daughter watching some mindless movie on a Saturday morning.
I was musing that having friends means crushing expectation that you can’t possibly live up to, that empathy and kindness were a weaknesses and that when you can no longer contribute economically you are tossed aside for someone else who can.
I was fourteen when I started working full time to support myself. I am now well into my forties and have not had less than a full-time schedule of work since. Perhaps I am afraid if I slow down, the world will run me over and not stop to see if I am ok. Perhaps I am scared to ask if my value to everyone around me is solely economic. Perhaps I just don’t know what else to do.
Perhaps I should not be sharing these thoughts with my eighteen year-old daughter who should be seeing a bright, idealistic future and that makes me a bad parent. But I think she already knows the truth and that if I sugar-coat it, she would see through it anyway.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
