Living for today

Some of my co-workers have been badgering me as to when I am going to have a baby. And such questions always arise after I have checked about their babies, and ooh-aahed over their kids pictures. I can't understand why they can't muster up the same kind of enthusiasm and interest in the things I do, as I happen to do for them, which I know at the moment happens to be their kids. I guess this is when they stop being friends and become people you try to avoid. :)

This brings to mind an interesting article K forwarded to me sometime back. Really interesting, especially the following parts, which I have pasted for reference:

"We are less likely than our predecessors to ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask if we are happy. We shun values such as self-sacrifice and duty as the pitfalls of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical. We measure the value of our lives within the brackets of our own births and deaths, and don't especially care what happens once we're dead. As we age - oh, so reluctantly! - we are apt to look back on our pasts and ask not 'Did I serve family, God and country?' but 'Did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat?' We will assess the success of our lives in accordance not with whether they were righteous, but with whether they were interesting and fun."

"We admire go-getters determined to pack their lives with as much various experience as time and money provide, who never stop learning, engaging, and savouring what every day offers - in contrast to dour killjoys who are resentful and begrudging as they bitterly do their duty."

Let me add though that I admire go-getters who take on babies, child-rearing, diapers and all with as much as gusto, joy and enthusiasm as any activity that I would take up. I believe "parenting" is also an activity or shall I say an experience which people chose. It is a way of life and it is no more noble than my life.