Children of the Rennaissance (Man)

I have determined to guide my children toward more focus in their interests, the better to improve their chances for success in a competitive world. At 17 and 11, they have both done a pretty fair job of confining their excellence to a narrow range.

My emphases in parenting continue to come from an effort to compensate for my life failures, and my kids are showing signs of stress from pushing back as I force their noses to the proverbial grindstone. I’m beginning to feel a little slimy for the way that I love them more as they progressively succeed in being everything that I’m not. My friend Ed says that our jobs as parents is to pass our neuroses on to our children, but as I think about it, perhaps some of these neuroses that we pass on are directly analogous to our own, but specifically opposite.

Of course, we don’t control, nor can we predict the path of the pinball, especially when the glass is removed from the pinball machine, and the ball is exposed to wind and rain and deus ex machina. Okay, let’s stop right there. I am dangerously close to the slippery slope of Nurture v. Nature where it becomes more compelling, but less interesting.

This begins for me with the personal notion that I have too little focus of interest and capability. At a time in my life when I can do anything that I desire, I desire to do anything. It seems that there is nothing that catches my eye that doesn’t catch my fancy. I could do that. I used to take comfort (even misplace pride) in the notion that I was a polymath. Yes, I’m good at just about everything I do, but there’s always someone close at hand that is better at any one of those things (but worse at everything else). In a bar chart world, I have a lot of bars, but there are no peaks on the chart.

It’s not too late for me. My persistent optimism allows for a long lifespan, and even for the prospect of many happy years as a mere brain floating in a beaker.