My thoughts on parenthood

The best way to make one understand the intricacies of a task or difficulties of a responsibility is to allot the task or to entrust him or her with that task or responsibility. The same person who had complained earlier will begin to appreciate those who preceded him while at the same time trying to make people understand who are about to follow him. This is what that has happened to me during the past one and half years of my life. Let me give you some rough statistics to give you an idea. 4 marriages of my close friends and cousins +1(Mine) 4 deaths in my relatives' circle. 3 new lives delivered into this world from my friends' & relatives' circle. +1(My own) Lot of movie watching. Numerous outings. Countless arguments and counter-arguments. Lots of moments of disappointments, happiness, sorrow and pure joy. No movie has ever and will ever showcase such multitude of scenes that blend seamlessly, and the best part is that you are the actor and the audience! During the course of the above events I had been the actor, going through the emotions, enacting my part(pretty badly :-)) I felt joy and sorrow to varying degrees. But now when I look back, amazingly I neither feel sorrow for my relatives' death nor, even to the birth of my own son. This doesn't mean that I have assumed the role of audience and enjoying the act. No I haven't reached that stage yet, but it simply means that I am a bit insensitive albeit with some help from the passage of "Time". Having strayed for a while, let me return to the first sentence of this blog. My idea of bringing up a child is, as you have rightly guessed "zero". Let's come to one understanding. Though almost all have or at-least had both parents, our knowledge or idea of how to be a parent falls well short of the finish line when one becomes a parent. Whatever changes or steps I wanted to take to my parenting style by looking at my own parents or others' turns out to be highly unimplementable. Let me give you one example. For once I decided not to show too much emotion; either joy or anxiety towards my kid. But when I tried to stick to it, the feedback was that I am not as happy as a typical father should be, that I don't love my kid as much as other fathers love their kids etc. To top it all, how could I manage to stay in Chennai, away from my kid for so long! Had it been someone else he would come to his kid every weekend (invariably some examples from the neighbourhood follows :-) ) So the situation made me partly understand the intricacies of being a parent. The result is that I consented to buy considerable number of dresses, one cradle for the kid. Added to that before I left for Chennai, I held him for a solid 15 minutes in my hands, played with him, made some funny faces and believe it or not, made him sleep. So I guess, that's how one evolves. Though my point of view is right for me, it doesn't seem to be appropriate for the situation. You can either create friction in the process of convincing others or you can simply assess the situation and adapt accordingly. Is this the solution? Well I don't have any answer for that. But one thing I am sure of is that it depends on the individual and the situation. It doesn't matter if you are a son, a husband or a father (For all those feminists! Please replace them with "a daughter, a wife or a mother) the situations are different and the contexts specific. Respecting the diversities, enduring the unintended or the unwanted, enjoying the pleasures of life like parenthood and last but not the least surrendering to your wife are keys to a happy life :-). If someday I can catch all this action by being an audience then my life's purpose is achieved. Tring, tring, tring... Guys get up! the boring monologue is over.