Doesn’t need to be a life or death situation, just any moment in your life where you found yourself saying “Holy shit, I can’t believe this is happening!”
Doesn’t need to be a life or death situation, just any moment in your life where you found yourself saying “Holy shit, I can’t believe this is happening!”
Arriving home with my newborn son. It was the first moment when it really sank in that I’m a parent and we have to take care of this tiny little thing.
It wasn’t a warm feeling but more of a fuuuuuck! What do we do? What do we do?! feeling. The enormity of the responsibility just overwhelmed me.
I somehow got through it and the post-natal care lady that visited a few hours later really helped with grounding the situation.
Anyway, it’s not a crazy situation for most of you. But for me it really felt like a “I can’t believe this is happening!” situation.
“I need an adult!!! Wait… I am the adult!?”
We all need someone to look up to. Eventually YOU become the person that people look up to, especially if you have kids. I think about that often and it’s sobering because it’s a huge responsibility.
It’s a responsiblity that should be only happening to people who’ve lived long-enough to have the basis, in experience, for doing it.
We’ve been failing children, more & more profoundly, as we’ve been letting the segregation-of-authority-from-responsibility and segregation-of-wealth-from-earners progress…
I remember my poor niece saying, “I can’t believe they let us leave the hospital with her! She’s so tiny and fragile! We don’t know what we’re doing!”
I do think I is an earth shattering situation for many. It was for me.
Right? For me, the realisation struck when we left the hospital: two people go into a building, three people come out. Carrying my baby daughter was such a crazy experience that first day.
^((nevermind the mathematician’s observation of “if one more person were to enter, the building would be empty again”))