Aging gracefully

Isn't that what it is all about? 

Jr. has a photo on her phone and every now and then she pushes it to my face.. It has a picture of a boy having a conversation with his dad.. Boy says "dad, I just turned 18" and the dad goes "when I was your age, I was 19!"

Everytime I say something or launch into the "when I was your age.." monologue, she looks down at her phone, finds that picture and holds it up like folks hold garlic or a cross in front of Dracula! 

Apparently I am older and getting to be begrudginly older, mistaking my experience for wisdom. 

Was having a conversation with a friend recently and he was telling me "you should be really proud of yourself for coming to the US and doing so well after all these years. you have worked hard and made it. do your daughters know how hard you had to work?" and my response was "they don't but I am okay with it now. I worked hard so they can have anything they want. why then bring up the fact that they should know the value of that? Didn't I do all this so they don't have to? They will have different challenges in their life and they should give their kids what they didn't have"

It just rolled off my tongue and maybe I was thinking out loud, but an hour later kept thinking about what was said.  What are the challenges they are going to face that they would not want their kids to face? 

My grandfather told me once that does not matter how much money you have or save.. after 7 generations it all goes though a cycle. if every generation does better than the previous after four generations it comes back down again. I thought that was ridiculous.. but maybe it makes sense now. If you are not challenged in certain things in a life time, those attributes may not be things on the "to fight for" list for the next generation, wealth just being one such attribute. It could be freedom, health.. many things and it might be in a family or as a community. I can see now how that can be possible!

The kids are growing up fast and they are sending me into some deep introspection mode on almost a daily basis. They are my kids but sometimes it is interesting to see that their logic and reasoning is very different from mine because they are a product of a different time and place. 

It is not better or worse. Just different. Takes me a few seconds to put things in context and I move on. 

Right now the trick seems to be not in accepting that my kids are the product of the way we raise them and their surroundings, but in accepting that I have changed so much over time. When your world view and your views about yourself change a lot over a few years, it is difficult to not think about your old stance when interacting with your kids.

Fortunately, they are both mature enough to let me know I am full of shit on a daily basis and I am now mature enough to smile and take it in my stride, knowing that they will get to be in my place in the not so distant future..