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dragonlady7maybe kids are growing up more responsible, which is why middle age astonishes us so.
eric sleeping through his alarm like a college student, but being a high-powered engineer type anyway.
being nearly thirty and having the husband and house but cats, not kids.
perhaps not a generational difference.
but we weren't raised to take being grown up all that seriously. there's no mystique in it now. we were raised where the status quo consisted of challenging the status quo. we don't feel such a need to challenge, now. we take it for granted. perhaps we're over-sophisticated.
so we don't think of ourselves as growing Up quite in the same way.
it occasionally strikes me that i'm a twentysomething, and that should mean something, but in the absence of a regular framework, i have difficulty in taking it with any degree of seriousness.
so... perhaps it's irrelevant or moot nowadays. we do what we think we ought to, when we feel we ought to, and the age we are has little to do with it. and i'd say for every stupid middle aged man who finds himself a gullible younger woman and has a second trophy family, you have a middle aged woman who decides it's time for college. you have college students buying houses, teenagers having babies, seventysomethings having orgies, thirtysomethings planning their retirement, and all that. it's just a matter of course. maybe it's wrong, to abandon traditional frameworks. but maybe it's not. and sure, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, but i think that might be more that too many people get married, instead of too many getting divorced. people view marriage as a throwaway ritual not because divorce is so easy, but because marriage is one of the few traditions left us and it's fairly hollow at this point. Most of my father's siblings have been divorced. we cling to marriage as being about as important as graduation, and as repeatable. perhaps that's not all bad, but it's confusing, because different people mean different things by it.
i'd get married, but only for certain reasons. one would be to save money on insurance and the like. another would be the excuse to have a big ol' party. and a third would be parental approval, though at this point my parents don't really seem to care.
but, the boy i love is apathetic on the topic, so it's not one i need to dwell on.
i just thought i'd write down some of the thoughts that were keeping me awake. that and the jet lag have ensured that i'm not getting much sleep just now.
eric sleeping through his alarm like a college student, but being a high-powered engineer type anyway.
being nearly thirty and having the husband and house but cats, not kids.
perhaps not a generational difference.
but we weren't raised to take being grown up all that seriously. there's no mystique in it now. we were raised where the status quo consisted of challenging the status quo. we don't feel such a need to challenge, now. we take it for granted. perhaps we're over-sophisticated.
so we don't think of ourselves as growing Up quite in the same way.
it occasionally strikes me that i'm a twentysomething, and that should mean something, but in the absence of a regular framework, i have difficulty in taking it with any degree of seriousness.
so... perhaps it's irrelevant or moot nowadays. we do what we think we ought to, when we feel we ought to, and the age we are has little to do with it. and i'd say for every stupid middle aged man who finds himself a gullible younger woman and has a second trophy family, you have a middle aged woman who decides it's time for college. you have college students buying houses, teenagers having babies, seventysomethings having orgies, thirtysomethings planning their retirement, and all that. it's just a matter of course. maybe it's wrong, to abandon traditional frameworks. but maybe it's not. and sure, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce, but i think that might be more that too many people get married, instead of too many getting divorced. people view marriage as a throwaway ritual not because divorce is so easy, but because marriage is one of the few traditions left us and it's fairly hollow at this point. Most of my father's siblings have been divorced. we cling to marriage as being about as important as graduation, and as repeatable. perhaps that's not all bad, but it's confusing, because different people mean different things by it.
i'd get married, but only for certain reasons. one would be to save money on insurance and the like. another would be the excuse to have a big ol' party. and a third would be parental approval, though at this point my parents don't really seem to care.
but, the boy i love is apathetic on the topic, so it's not one i need to dwell on.
i just thought i'd write down some of the thoughts that were keeping me awake. that and the jet lag have ensured that i'm not getting much sleep just now.
