{"id":783,"date":"2013-10-16T21:30:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-16T21:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/regrets-or-not-on-getting-middle-aged.html"},"modified":"2013-10-16T21:30:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-16T21:30:00","slug":"regrets-or-not-on-getting-middle-aged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/regrets-or-not-on-getting-middle-aged.html","title":{"rendered":"Regrets (or not) on getting middle-aged"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

So a friend posted this \u2014 an old NYT \u201cOpinionator\u201d piece<\/a> about the Path Not Taken, and the ambivalence about alternate life paths, and the way this turns into judgment of those who have, in fact, taken the other life path.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

The author is a single 42-year-old, perfectly happy not to be married or a father, and seems quite satisfied with his choice, glad not to be tied down with children and a mortgage.\u00a0 As he puts it, <\/p>\n

I can only imagine the paralytic terror that must seize my friends with families as they lie awake calculating mortgage payments and college funds and realize that they are locked into their present lives for farther into the future than the mind\u2019s eye can see. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Funny, I don\u2019t like awake calculating mortgage payments, except for with\u00a0optimism, being frugal and all, determining how many years we\u2019ve shaved off by extra payments \u2014 even though with the low interest rates now,\u00a0it doesn\u2019t make as much sense to do so.)<\/p>\n

But then he continues,<\/p>\n

Watching our peers\u2019 lives is the closest we can come to a glimpse of the parallel universes in which we didn\u2019t ruin that relationship years ago, or got that job we applied for, or got on that plane after all. It\u2019s tempting to read other people\u2019s lives as cautionary fables or repudiations of our own. <\/p>\n

A colleague of mine once hosted a visiting cartoonist from Scandinavia who was on a promotional tour. My colleague, who has a university job, a wife and children, was clearly a little wistful about the tour, imagining Brussels, Paris, and London, meeting new fans and colleagues and being taken out for beers every night. The cartoonist, meanwhile, looked forlornly around at his host\u2019s pleasant row house and sighed, almost to himself: \u201cI would like to have such a house.\u201d\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But\u00a0I have to\u00a0say that I don\u2019t feel this ambivalence.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Do I think it would be fun to go on vacations unconstrained by the school calendar, and to go into the city?\u00a0 Of course.\u00a0 Hey, it\u2019s be fun to live<\/em> in the city, though I\u2019ve never been one for bars and nightlife.\u00a0 But I\u2019ve reached the point where the kids are old enough to be much more self-sufficient than they\u00a0used to be (though they still require quite a bit of homework-chasing), so that I know that, as long as you\u2019re not the Duggars, the dependency of infancy and toddlerhood doesn\u2019t last forever, and the end product, if you do it right, is usually someone you can enjoy spending time with.\u00a0 Besides, now that the kids don\u2019t need my constant attention, I have begun to\u00a0recognize that a significant part of what limits me in what I can get done is my own lack of initiative.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And I don\u2019t really know anyone in the category of \u201cchildless, and living it up frivolously.\u201d\u00a0 I do have a sister who never married (not intentionally; she just\u00a0never found the right guy, and not due to pickiness but for other reasons) and she has actually been, at various times, disappointed about it, but at the same time is very busy in community and volunteer activities.\u00a0 A couple friends\/acquaintances from many years ago likewise never married; we\u2019re \u201cfacebook friends\u201d and I don\u2019t know their whole story but I don\u2019t presume one way or the other as to whether it was an intentional choice, and Aunt Joyce and Uncle John never had kids, but no one in the family ever prodded them as to whether it was intentional or not.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

For that matter, I find the folks who say, \u201cI don\u2019t want kids because they\u2019re too much effort and would disrupt my lifestyle\u201d to be deeply self-centered \u2014 but, you know, they\u2019re probably right when they say that they would make awful parents for that very reason.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

And part of being an adult is being able to accept that your choices have consequences, that taking one direction does close other paths, without being morose about it, and likewise recognizing that there are still plenty of options open \u2014 and, at the same time, that some paths end up closed by fate, and you don\u2019t get to control everything about the direction your life heads.<\/p>\n

What I do have an issue with are people who so completely foreclose the idea of having children that they feel entirely justified in having an abortion\/prodding their girlfriend\/wife do get one, because they simply don\u2019t want to enter that world of People With Kids.\u00a0 Every time there\u2019s a letter by someone in such a situation in Ask Amy or the other columnists I find this mind-bogglingly awful, or when commenters to abortion-related pieces unhesitatingly say, \u201cI don\u2019t want to have a kid right now\/ever, because I\u2019m too busy travelling\/developing my career\/partying.\u00a0 If I got pregnant, I wouldn\u2019t hesitate to get an abortion.\u201d\u00a0 Eww.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So a friend posted this \u2014 an old NYT \u201cOpinionator\u201d piece about the Path Not Taken, and the ambivalence about alternate life paths, and the way this turns into judgment of those who have, in fact, taken the other life path.\u00a0 The author is a single 42-year-old, perfectly happy not to be married or a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nRegrets (or not) on getting middle-aged<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So a friend posted this -- an old NYT "Opinionator" piece about the Path Not Taken, and the ambivalence about alternate life paths, and the way this turns\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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