It's not pressure of a job that makes one feel this way. It is in fact the opposite. It's the lack of a meaningful purpose for living. If I said that aloud to the family at the breakfast table (What am I saying? There is no such thing any more.) I know exactly what their response would be. 'What about us? Don't we count? Don't we mean anything to you at all?' All of which, of course, is nonsense. They are very dear to me, each one. But they all live their self-contained lives, most of them trying to do more than they can cope with in terms of both time and energy. If we do have time to spend together, it is usually leisure time we have made a point of putting aside. Which is good, and very necessary, to keep the channels of sharing and caring clear, free and in working order.
But such is the pressure and tempo of life in this day and age that one soon begins to wonder whether time, even 'family time' spent in domestic chit-chat for the sake of being in one another's company is time well spent. How long before one begins to wonder whether the branch of the family tree being favoured with your presence at that particular time is showing signs of restlessness that can only signify the result of their wanting to get on with whatever it is that they would be doing if you had not engaged them in conversation?
We all live such independent, encapsulated lives. Not particularly because we want it this way. More because we think it the right thing to do. This perhaps is part of one's desire, nowadays, not to get in the way of each other. Each branch of the family, and sooner or later each member of each branch, develops their own individual agenda. Of course there is much to be said for individual enterprise emanating from the fact that no two characters are alike. But it doesn't make life any easier.
Obviously we would be boring company for each other if we were all clones. The new blood that comes into the family through marriage or adoption, or the new thinking emerging from new influences being brought to bear on succeeding generations subject to innovation in education or simply new directions of thought as a result of new discoveries in all the different areas of man's experience and endeavour, will bring pressure on the family at large to change its ways, broaden its thinking. Which will engender difficulties, challenging us to find ways of resolving differences in our responses before they become problems and, finally, issues. But that's how progress comes about - if we handle it properly.
Material changes, due to social change, will deeply affect lifestyles, attitudes, expectations, disrupting the observance of old methods and traditions. All these factors, and a multitude of others, mitigate against the calm continuation of the old ways, life as it was. The family must surely be the first institution to be affected by a necessity to change and adapt to emerging forces and novel conditions.
Not all the necessary changes will be for the worse, but one can only regret the passing of the traditional family unit where each succeeding generation fell naturally into a pattern of shared labour, effort, and responsibility, shouldering with pride the tasks, aims, ambitions of the generations gone before. The real challenge is how we cope with it.
Happy and relatively rare in the New world, is the family nowadays who live together, each member contributing their own particular talent in their special area of responsibility, for the good of the whole.
It seemed to work in the old days. What has so changed as to make a contented, co-operating family unit a rarity in our time? Perhaps a vital factor could be Greater Expectations? The novelty, luxury, diversity of city life draws the younger generation to the promised exciting fulfilment simply, evidently, through the earning of money. A well-paid city job appears to be the means to participate in the drive for urban ecstasy! Possessions become paramount.
expectations are driven to heights previously undreamed of, simply by the machinery of commerce. To be content with less becomes the scorned stamp of retrogression. Half the world, perhaps more than half, must live in poverty and deprivation so that the other half can revel in luxury.
Where is this leading us? Are we prepared to consider the outcome? Is the horror we refuse to face worth the lifestyle that can only be temporary?
Awkward Family Photos
Fay's Family Food: Delicious Recipes Where One Meal Feeds Everyone. Whatever Age! UK
by guest blogger: Brian Murgatroyd
No comments:
Post a Comment