I saw something a few days ago that read:
“As we watch our children grow up, they’re also watching us grow up.”
I’ve never really looked at it that way before, and I’ve been trying to make sense of it since.
The prevailing thought seems to be that as parents, we need to be the ones who have all the answers and know right from wrong. After all, we’re the ones who’ve gained immense amounts of knowledge via valuable life experience. We’re the ones that are going to explain how this life and world work, right?
Wrong.
Socrates once said,
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
There’s no better statement to sum up being a parent.
I look back to when my first child was born and how utterly unprepared I was for fatherhood, despite what I thought was significant preparation. Like countless others before me, I thought I had it all figured out, and like all of them, I too proved Socrates right by quickly coming to the sobering realization that I knew absolutely nothing.
Author Roy T. Bennett wrote that change begins at the end of one’s comfort zone. If we take this statement as fact, then becoming a parent for the first time is not just the end of our comfort zone, it’s well beyond it.
As we stumble through parenthood, we quickly learn that children are mirrors. They bring to light painful flaws in our personalities which we know exist, but refuse to acknowledge. They keep pushing us further and further from that edge of comfort Bennet mentions, forcing us to make a very important decision:
Are we going to grow up with them, or simply watch them grow up alone?
To some people, this may come as a no-brainer, but for many, it’s a tough choice. Sure, some changes may be easy, but others are extremely hard. There are decisions that need to be made and priorities that need to be re-assessed and adjusted, if not discarded completely.
Sometimes, it means having to re-examine one’s entire life and doing some very serious soul-searching.
In short, it isn’t easy, and it’s a choice many, if not all parents have struggled with time and time again.
Dad and Mom aren’t titles, they’re badges that need to be earned through hard work and dedication. They take sacrifice. Becoming a father or mother is a matter of biology; becoming a Mom or Dad is a matter of choosing to grow up alongside your children.
With each breath, every living thing in the world inches closer to the end. It may sound morbid, but it’s an undeniable truth, and one each of us needs to come to terms with. One day, our time will run out. For those of us who are parents, it means leaving our kids behind.
When these thoughts are on the mind, one can’t help but picture our kids looking back and thinking about us as parents. If we’ve done it right, when our kids travel down Memory Lane, instead of being filled with sadness at watching us age, they’ll also be filled with a warm sense of love and appreciation at the fact that as they grew up, we tried our best to grow up alongside them…albeit sometimes tripping along the way.
So, when I think back to the caption that captivated me a few days ago, I realized why I’ve been thinking about it so much:
It’s wrong.
As our children grow up, they’re watching us AGE. Each of us must decide whether they will also get to watch us grow up.
Art: Thomas-Jules Massard
