On your journey

I can hands down say I have never felt intensity as in the moment my daughters were born. But also, sitting halfway between feeling so lucky, so blessed, and so terrified about getting it wrong, and not being up to the job. For help, I as do many parents tap into one of the things that our culture does well - books, ideas, discussion, to help broaden our picture and learn from the lives of others. We don't have elders,we don't have a village to help us. But at least we have a questioning society that puts out so much information and that brings us the thoughts from across the globe, that other people's lives have gone into making, all for us to digest, use or discard.

Most of us, men and women, had odd and difficult times growing up, distant fathers did not teach how to father, marital chaos and widespread divorces made us distrustful and unsure of how to form strong relationships. and make them work. We had little in the way of spiritual depth, the old religions collapsed but only money and pleasure rushed in to replace them. We didn't really know the deep peace of the earth around us only the chatter of television and the clutter of bedrooms full of junk.

What is it that I want for my daughters ? In answering that I search deeper within myself, so that things I had kept buried inside come to surface, beliefs, passions, forgotten memories to become a more wide awake, fully alive human being, rather than someone who provides meals, drives the school taxi, packs a lunch for the school bag for another rat race day. What our kids will remember, and what will strengthen them, is the moments of closeness, honesty and peaceful times that we spend in amid the scramble of life. The parts that we fence off and make special, where we refuse to dance the the tune of the commercial world.