What Do Parents Wish For?

That is to say are they looking forward to the future or gazing fondly at the past?

8. Parents are more likely to long for an earlier time in their lives: Fact

One of the poll question that asks people whether if they could, would they rather go back in time or forward into the future. Parents are 12.5% more likely to choose going back in time. Non-parents are 30% more likely to say they’d rather go into the future. This could be interpreted a couple ways: Perhaps parents wish they could go back to their early 20s or high school. Or maybe they wish they could go back to an earlier era altogether, when family life seemed more idyllic.

My mother, God rest her soul, led a, to say the least, challenging life from her youngest days on. But late in life she confided to me that what she longed for the most was those days when her house was full of her children.



I was amazed since I remember those days as being stressed for her–to the point that I wondered how she kept her sanity. Fast forward to the present: what is my fondest memory? My little girls excitedly rushing to open the front door to greet me coming home from work: "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" You can't buy that with any amount of money.



So for my money, that is what parents are thinking about: the days when their children were driving them crazy while at the same time making precious memories:

Non-parents have “better” lives according to worldly measures:

…except for one thing: they aren’t as happy as people with kids.  File under “the last shall be first” and other gospel paradoxes.

Read the whole thing.

(Via Catholic and Enjoying It!.)

Autumn

I'm sitting at home wrestling unsuccessfully with some virus or other. I've been spoiled by relative resistance to diseases over the year. When the rest of the family gets ill, I merely got tired and grumpy. But the years are catching up.

This has been a lovely Autumn, something we don't get every year. So, walking to work has sent me into reveries about Fall colours, dying, death and re-birth. Why do we associate Autumn with starting out? The school year begins. Football and Hockey start over. And yet Nature is retreating, preparing for the sleep of Winter

And does any of this tell us something about ourselves when we enter our own personal Autumn? I would argue that Nature, beautiful in every season, is at it's best now: Colourful, brilliant, especially on the grey days that we're likely to see. Are we at our best in our Autumn?

Thomas Aquinas apparently said that we reach our prime from 50 to 70 years of age. Is this our Autumn? Should we start out anew in these late months of our life, armed with experience, education and intelligence? Well, experience anyway.

The colourful leaves drop, winter's sleep ensues. But beneath the white coat the dead leaves are preparing to nourish new life in the Spring. If we refuse to live our lives to their peak at these late stages, are we denying those to come nourishment for their Spring? Didn't our parents and their generation give themselves completely to life, enriching us in the process?

Random thoughts at a keyboard while recovering from one of life's little insults.

And Here I've Been Worried For No Reason

My brain is actually getting better:

Older brain really may be a wiser brain: "

From the New York Times: Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain.

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, 'Progress in Brain Research.'

Some brains do deteriorate with age. Alzheimer’s disease, for example, strikes 13 percent of Americans 65 and older. But for most aging adults, the authors say, much of what occurs is a gradually widening focus of attention that makes it more difficult to latch onto just one fact, like a name or a telephone number. Although that can be frustrating, it is often useful. [continue]

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(Via Mirabilis.ca.)