Biology vs. Ideology

06.13.2010

I saw a friend’s posting recently of her and her kids and their family. The photos included your typical family vacation, family outings, family with friends, etc. But there was one particular photo that caught my attention. It was, like I said, your typical picture of mom with her kids and a friend with the her own kid, but they were all hanging out on the carpet of someone’s house. As the kids crawled around and the mom’s looked at the camera, I got such a sense of contentment from the photo. Not contentment on my side but just that the people in the photo looked really happy to be where they were doing what they were doing.

I found myself jealous. I found myself jealous because they seemed so happy with their decision…so happy to have friends and family with children around them. I have so many memories like that growing up and, when our time comes to end our journey in this lifetime, it’s not the days we had at our jobs that we’ll remember or how much money’s in our bank account. Not that I speak from experience, cause I haven’t knocked on death’s door, but I’m imagining that one would remember the moments that are more meaningful than remembering the sum total of your bank account. But what do I know? My point is, I found myself wishing that I had those meaningful memories to be able to pass on down to my own children and, almost instantaneously, a heaviness came over me. I can’t reconcile what is obviously innate with my ideological thoughts. And I’m just continuing to meditate on these thoughts because I am desperate for a sign to point me in the right direction. People say, “You’ll know one day. You’ll wake up and you’ll know.” But no one EVER told me that I would have this fierce internal struggle between what is biological and what is ideological. Figures this would happen to me.