I made it a goal of mine to write a little something everyday, but here I am letting the day get away from me. There is a chicken in the oven and babies crying downstairs. my wife is attempting to soothe or ignore them. Sometimes I am not sure which. All I know is that they are downstairs crying and I am up here writing.
The chicken doesn’t require much attention as it is in the oven and will be done, or hopefully done, when the timer goes off. There will be potatoes that need mashing, but most important is to help the fussy babies. That has proven to be difficult as one has a tooth coming in and enjoys crying about it as babies are want to do. The other is as happy as can be as long as he isn’t subjected to one activity for too long.
That is how most of our day is spent. Rotating the babies from play mat, to jumper, to tummy time, to lap, to bottle, and eventually to bed. I would say we’re trying our hardest but I’m not sure I’ve ever truly tried my hardest. There has always been a lot that has come naturally to me. Things that I find easy that others say is difficult. It has made my life one where I never try to hard as I’d rather settle for good enough than great. Even if I could reach great with far less effort than most.
It is almost like a curse of slightly above average intelligence. I figured out long ago it required no effort to be above average and that is where I settled. I have grown tired of settling, but bad habits die hard, and I am uncertain if I can find a way to put in the effort. It is kind of like the chicken in the oven or the mashed potatoes on the stove. They are sitting and waiting for me. Waiting for a timer to go off and some might say I made a good dinner, but I am up here writing this, waiting for a timer to go off, and putting absolute minimum effort into making dinner.
I worry about my effort. It is, what they say, the one thing you can control. I consider myself to be quite lazy and unaccomplished. I avoid most things that require too much effort. When it comes to taking the path of least resistance or most resistance I take the path that gets me where I am going and sometimes I find where I am going is where I already am and there is no need to take any path at all.
That is my worry with the babies. there is no path. We don’t know where we are going. As cliched as it sounds it is about the journey and not the destination because by the time they are ready to reach the final, inevitable destination of life I will be nothing but a memory. All we have with our children is the journey and I hope that it will be a good one and that maybe I can make some effort to help in their raising. Maybe I can stop settling for being a good enough parent and be a great one. Or I will settle back into familiar roles and hope for the best.
David Huzzard Writes 