I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my life, and about family. I spent some time with some family recently and it got me thinking about life and the future. I am enjoying less and less partying all weekend with friends and am loving thinking about and planning for the future. That $200′s worth of drinks could be a new coffee table, or some really nice curtains. Is this a maturity that comes with age or is it something else?
So this brings me to the point I’d like to discuss. How much are we really in control of ourselves? And if not ourselves, who or what is controlling us?
Society is based around the notion that a woman and man meet and fall in love, they get married and they create a family. It’s a cycle that works for so many people, it gives people with no direction a direction. It’s also probably one of the primary reasons that this nuclear family just doesn’t really work anymore. If being a mum is your sole goal in life, no doubt your kids are going to feel smothered, they’re going to grow up and become independent, and you’re going to go through all of it wondering what was really all in it for you. That is if you’re lucky enough to choose when you want to have a baby.
Basic instincts come into the equation though, are we pairing off and breeding because society tells us to? Or at some age do our natural biological clock start pushing us towards the necessary outcome for any species, propagation. An amoeba doesn’t worry about showing off in front of the other single cell organisms, it focuses all it’s energy into division. A wild elephant will eat, and migrate, and mate all so that he or she can get some elephant-nookie and raise offspring, whom they’ll sacrifice their life to protect.
These natural instincts have shaped our society for as long as we have record and no doubt further back than that. When I was younger I used to loathe the idea that external and internal forces directed peoples lives so much, that they adhered to the standard that almost everybody does, and they didn’t do something unique and live for themselves.
I can think of a select few people who have been connected to my life who didn’t allow themselves to adhere to those standards, with some of them ended up in a situation they never meant to be in in the first place. Was this an accident? Sure. A bad thing? No. I can think of an artist I know who was never right for having a family, and though it may have appeared as though he ran away, to him, he managed to escape and live the life he wants. The norm isn’t always best for everybody.
I’m understanding more every day why so many people end up living the same lives, and not rocking the boat the way that looked so appealing when I was younger. It’s not that I’m unique and these people are all sheep, it just takes a measure of time, a dash of societal influence and a dollop of instinct.
Image by Thomas Hawk
food for thought! Very interesting!
That’s deep Dave. Ever considered writing? Would love to read a novel on this stuff!
… at the end of it all though, I didn’t get the point of how YOU feel?
Maybe I missed it.. might try analysing again later.
By the way, I’ve thought about alot of that stuff too. =)
Yeah Clancy, I have considered writing, that’s why we started a blog website! =)
Feel free to chime back in if you analyze anything else out of it! And check back often for updates, we’re trying to keep them pretty regular =P
It’s hard to say what affects people to settle down, but I don’t think it’s as simple as age. In years you’re older than me, but I’m much more staid and boring than you’re likely to be for some time (maybe ever). In the nature vs nurture debate, I tend to think nature is the more powerful. If my life had been different, I think I would still be approximately the same person – perhaps a bit more bitter, or maybe a bit less cynical, but basically the same person.
I agree with Jennifer. We are who we are. We’re all born with our unique personality and an incredibly strong instinct to procreate.
Why are we so attracted to the opposite sex( in most cases) and why do women have intense maternal longing ( generally) ? Marriage and children may be for those who have no imagination to be different, but even unique artists who escape ( i agree with you Davey ) have that desire to be a part of that family u create.
Maybe one gets to a point in life where partying leaves you empty and dissatisfied. That in itself could be a way of life for some.
There is choice for everyone. For me, for all the things I’ve done in my life, the experience of having and nurturing a child has been the most fulfilling.
You’ll find your way, your own way and it will be right.
Well this is a normal occurrence as we grow up, we think about what we are doing and are we still enjoying the life we are living at the moment. So what prompts us to think about this, as there is obviously something, either an event or a memory that prompts us to ask these questions. In your case a recent meeting with family has prompted you to look at your life and assess whether you are doing what you really want to do.
You are right about what society expects from people, it is the norm for man and woman to marry and settle down, buy a home and have children, so the parents have lovely grandchildren and great grandchildren to look after. I am not so sure that this is the reason that this idea of a happy family is not working anymore; Certainly, I would agree that at times it doesn’t work for some people, but it does work for the majority.
We get to the point of, are we in control of our lives or is someone controlling us, well no one is controlling us, however, the way your mother and father raised you is controlling you now. It was the same with them, the way they were raised gave them the ideas and the knowledge to how they would think and raise their own children. This is learnt behavior as our parents were teachers that showed us how we should act and behave in our future life.
As we grow up we tend to mimic how our parents behaved, or how they did things in life, how they handled crisis in an emergency, there are certain traits that are handed down from generation to generation, such things as drug taking, alcoholism, some mental inflictions have also been passed down. It is mainly attitudes and practices that we pick up from our parents though. This even extends to who we choose as a partner, research has shown that boys will find someone that is similar to the mother and girls will find someone who is similar to their father.
Some women do become career mothers, because that is what they want to do, I am not sure if the children would feel smothered though, this would depend on how the mother was raised herself, if she was spoilt by her mother then she is more than likely to spoil her children. The same thing goes for fathers, if your father did a lot of things for you and talked a lot with you then you would more than likely do the same with your children.
I think that many people have always wondered what the point to life is, what is the point to getting married and having children; do we go through all these happy times, sad times, crisis etc and then die? Well I unfortunately don’t have an answer for that question. No one has. Whether we get married or not, if we have children in or out of marriage is a decision that can only be made by the individual.
One can certainly ask advice about these things but ultimately it is up to the individual what they do. There are women that never get married, never have children, because that’s the decision they have made, the same with men. If you look back into these people’s lives and history you would probably find something has happened to turn them off this, or even something their parents have done or said that has made them to make this decision.
I don’t think it is natural instincts that have made us think along the lines of getting married and having children, but social pressure put upon us as we grow that does it. Back in the early English days and even up till a point here in Australia, there was no such thing as divorce, you were married for life, and that was that. So that has been passed on from generation to generation.
Your loathing of internal and external forces I would say came from you watching your parents as they proceeded in life and raised you and your siblings. Many of us have followed the pattern that was expected of us by society and been married to the person that we thought was going to be for life, but ended in divorce because we did not like what our partner expected us to do, or one had done something wrong to the other.
You’re right in saying”The norm isn’t always best for everybody”. And this will continue to happen for generations to come. I think (and this is my opinion only), if you sit down and look at the way the world is heading these days and go through all the options available to you, so that you have a happy life, then you will be ok, talk to your partner about what you want to do, the best way to make a future marriage successful is to talk about all the possibilities together, then there will be no surprises around the corner.
Now I have only become aware of the above material and facts over the last two and a half years, and I am 62 years old. I completed a Advanced Diploma in Family Therapy and Counselling and now I am a University student completing a Graduate Diploma. My appologise for a long answer but I felt that it needed to be answered correctly.
Bazza