Do you ever have days when the world slides off the rails, and no matter what you think or do, nothing really helps and you can’t see a way to make everybody happy?
It reminds me of the old saying - “you can please some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time”.
Tonight I am working a bit late to make up for hours lost today through network problems. The project I am working on seems to be imitating my life at the moment - taking one step forward breaks two other things, or requires that something else be built in order to try out what I am building - and to build that, I need to build something else, ad infinitum.
The building / living process then turns into an enormous game of whack-a-mole where nobody has told you that you cannot win, so you blindly carry on anyway, oblivious to the size of the hole you are digging.
While walking back from the office to home this evening all sorts of thoughts churned around my head. I wondered if the adoption is really behind most of my stresses at the moment - a fear that I won’t be as good a Dad as everybody tells me I will. Perhaps it’s also the loss of control, with our life being in the hands of others at the moment - and the worry that the version of ourselves we have presented to those making the decisions is perhaps better than the real thing?
It’s both a credit and a flaw in my character really. I spend most of my time trying to make others happy - I don’t like it when people are sad, and often find myself falling on my own sword - sacrificing myself so that others might be happy. Of course, most of the time nobody notices me doing it.
The worst thing is I know I do it, and am seemingly powerless to stop myself. Many people would say “oh, but if you did, you wouldn’t be you”, and the reply I’ll never give them is “and if I did, I would have a life of my own”.
Of course, children are going to change everything. They will become many of my reasons for doing everything, and I won’t begrudge that at all. While responsibility may weigh heavy upon me for a time, the thought that I may be able to do something good - something that will last, and leave a mark by which I may be judged by future generations - that seems like payment enough for the sacrifice, stress and uncertainty that lies ahead.
What am I saying here?
The Beatles song comes to mind… “with a little help from my friends”. I’m going to have to learn to ask for help.