Had lunch with an army buddy earlier last week and apart from talking about underaged, headline-making prostitutes, he talked about looking after his kids. Although he spent time with them, one's a few months old, he felt it was hardly enough. With work he is away from his older boy the whole day while the kid survives full day childcare. My friend spends about 3 hours a weekday with his son. Out of 24 hours a day we're graced/blessed/cursed/dealt with, that's just 1/8. With full weekends (that's 48 hours) and 15 hours across the weekdays, that's 63 hours or 37.5% of a week. If one has a kid at age 30 and passes on at 80, the number of years one has in a kid's life is really just 37.5% of 50 years or 18+ years. In real time, 18 years of the kid's life of which perhaps 15 the child recognises or remembers.
That's a staggeringly small number. There was a newspaper article that mentioned some parents dumped their kid with grandparents the whole working week and saw the little monsters on weekends. Applying my rough maths above, these parents have 14+ bonding years. That's it. One decade plus.
So it's time we're sacrificing. I used to have a little post-it on my desk in my agency days that read 'Don't waste your time'. It's something you can't get back. When you're my age you think about the time you've spent with people. Family, people come and gone, friends, people who've had an influence on your life or steered it in some way, and decisions made that led you to where you are now. It's a lot of thinking and sometimes regretting. There's a Baz Luhrmann song about sunscreen that expounds 'sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself'. What's not there is that life is about the interactions you make and perhaps the lives you change.
My nephew, who comes over most mornings to be looked after by my mum, hid my work bag as I was putting on my shoes. He said 'no, you're not going to work'. What he meant was 'stay here and play with me'. Because that's all that matters, isn't it?
We have quite a bit to learn from children, about time and what's truly important.
1 comment:
If I have kids and they act all cute begging me not to go to work, I'd probably just give in that means effectively I will be out of job in no time anyway. Then come the sacrifices - going out, toys, food, holidays, 'enrichment' classes all other kids are attending and other worries about the future. Going back to work then becomes more than a temptation.
So how? If one of two persons cannot afford to be a full-time parent is it still worthwhile having kids at all?
Thinking back now - sure, I'd love to have my mom with me the whole time I was growing up. But she had to work to make ends meet. And we're not talking about going to daycare or whatever fancy children centres - we just get left behind at home sometimes with no meals. Now we're all grown up and they've long retired. Do we have enough time with them? I am as guilty as my mom was back then.
In general, people don't work till 80. When you retire and have all the time in the world to be with your kids, they in turn don't.
How, think too much? Or don't think just do it?
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