Daily Writing Prompt
  • Home
    • Teacher's Guide
    • Prompts to Publishing
    • Contact
  • Daily Ten Prompts
    • All About Me Prompts
    • August Prompts / Set 1
    • August Prompts / Set 2
    • Back to School Prompts
    • September Prompts / Set 1
    • September Prompts / Set 2
    • October Prompts / Set 1
    • October Prompts / Set 2
    • Daily Ten Archive
  • Mega Prompts
    • Descriptive Writing Prompts
    • Persuasive Writing Prompts
    • Narrative Writing Prompts
    • Creative Writing Prompts
    • Journal Writing Prompts
    • Expository Writing Prompts
    • Book Reflections
  • Story Starters
  • Background Knowledge
    • Today in History >
      • january Writing Prompts
      • February Writing Prompts
      • March Writing Prompts
      • April Writing Prompts
      • May Writing Prompts
      • June Writing Prompts
      • July Writing Prompts
      • August Writing Prompts
      • September Writing Prompts
      • October Writing Prompts
      • November Writing Prompts
      • December Writing Prompts
    • TED Radio Topics >
      • Set One Menu >
        • Animals and Us >
          • Animal Tens_Media
        • Better Classrooms >
          • Classroom Tens_Media
        • Champions
        • Curiosity to Discovery
        • Food Matters
        • Future of Cities
        • Next Greatest Generation >
          • Generation Tens_Media
        • Overcoming
        • Predicting the Future >
          • Future Tens_Media
        • Simply Happy >
          • Happy Tens_Media
        • Source of Creativity >
          • Creativity Tens_Media
        • Unstoppable Learning
    • Reflection Points >
      • Adult Bandaids
      • All the Hats
      • An Ideal Day
      • Comfort Foods
      • Digital Hoarders
      • Infobesity
      • Infomercials
      • My Becoming Place
      • Ocean Bobbing
      • Outhouse Editor
      • Power of Example
      • Starting Over
      • The Circle of Life
      • The Magic of BIC
      • Truth in Labeling
      • Visually Challenged Learners
      • Watching the World
Reflection Points Menu

The Circle of Life

I’m not sure when I fell through the looking glass but I just keep getting closer to everything I set out to run from. ...

J. McKay / Parents, if you feel like your children don’t understand you, reinvest your mental energy and concern elsewhere because they don’t and they won’t---for as long as they are children; however, don’t worry; as you should well remember, that doesn’t last forever. At some point their adult eyes will open. 
As children it’s impossible to separate what the adults around you do from who they are. If seven to seventeen year-old me called it as I saw it
, my father fathered because he was a father, he taught because he was a teacher, he coached because he was a coach. That is the astounding circular logic that teenagers are plagued with and their parents are tormented by.

This morning I woke up and I mentally mapped out my day: planned the workout for my cross-country runners, reviewed what I would fix the kids for breakfast and what they would wear to the babysitters and evaluated how close I was to finishing my preparation for the coming semester’s instruction….then I called my dad and asked him if he thought it was funny that he had taken over my body and if I could have it back now.

Don’t get me wrong; my admiration for my father is longstanding. I love him and respect him for all that he is (I mean does…see I told you), and while I’d consider myself fortunate to be like him, I never wanted to be him. And now I am, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t baffle me.

I’m not sure when I fell through the looking glass but I just keep getting closer to everything I set out to run from. Not that there was anything that he modeled that was undesirable. I just didn’t see myself fitting into his life. I guess kind of like child me couldn’t imagine that my feet would ever fit his shoes, which seemed until just the other day positively huge.



Reflection Points
Picture
I think one of the paradigm shifts that has enriched my appreciation of this new awareness of myself via my father is that where before I just saw conditions or circumstances that I used to construct my view of his identity, I am starting to see that his life is made up of the same medium of my own: choices.

We are whom we chose to be; not that we bought the lot but life gradually just kind of amounts to what it is: moments of decision at divergent paths. Because I now do so much of what my father does, albeit not nearly so well, I have begun to see his backstory through the lens of my own life and this understanding makes me appreciate him all the more.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.