A Quest for Certainty...

A Quest for Certainty Blocks the Search for Meaning... Kids seem so certain... And I wasn't.

As I'd just went through another young adult episode of disagreement. I announced, "Well, I finished that section of parenting! But I'm not done yet. I think I can say that."
This was after I'd just finished a phone conversation as to "... what's the issue that my kid couldn't be bothered with learning and making an investment, that now saves her near $1k? As well, perhaps in the future she may very well gain $50k or $100k on this investment thirty years from now." This other professional adult and I surmised.

The response from the other mother, also a professional, "All kids are like that. I was like that too. I couldn't see it. And I didn't want to be bothered "

I nearly gasped for a second. Because this quite level-headed business woman I could not picture her being bothered as a kid by making a smart economic move. As I've known her, she's just too knowledgeable for that.

But then I realized something and remarked to her, "Well I was different as a kid. I was paying my mother's mortgage at age seventeen." Thus back then, I was more so scared. As well apprehensive to take my hard earned dollars and sock them away for the future. It was because I didn't want to be poor again. I wanted to have liquidity in the funds, I'd earned and put into my checking and savings accounts. There was much uncertainty throughout my childhood.

Often I wondered, what was it that had made me so different in my thinking even as a child? Was it my observations? Perhaps, my ability to think Globally with compassion? Where did that all come from? I search for the meanings of my odd differences and experiences of my childhood.

As my husband had said many years before, "You were always forty-one years old. And you were never a little girl." I'd agreed with an. "Ahhhhhh Bach." But still, I reflect quite often alone as to the difference in my thinking as a child. I enjoyed being responsible at a very young age. I didn't need to socialize, go to functions. I had enough at home that occupied that space in my mind.

In fact, I was fulfilled by those responsibilities. Which coupled with my school struggles and eventually my attention to long distance running. I had a full plate. As I seem to always do. As my mother-in-law would lament, "You do too much..." As my father-in-law would respond, "Got a lot of work. Give it to a busy person... They'll get it done." ----Jody-Lynn Reicher

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