Parenting in times of craziness

I never thought I would be a father again at age 56 but here I am again with a rambunctious little 4-year old boy. He is full of zeal and chatty as a songbird at sunrise. But he is my little boy and I love him.

He gets to grow up in the Andes mountains where the air is pristine and away from the cacophony of the city. He is surrounded by animals here at his mother’s sanctuary. They are his “brothers’ and “sisters.” He has been vegan since birth and is learning every day that animals are his friends. The setting is idyllic for sure and hopefully, this experience will mold this little boy into a responsible and caring man who can lead by example and teach the world compassion.

My only concern is that I pray that I can remain healthy and strong well into his adulthood so that I can continue being a role model and pillar of strength for him and not a burden of love. When he is 18, I will be 70, wow! I need to make sure to eat well, exercise, and rest to be sure to be there for him. There is not much I can do to change the fact of our massive age difference. It is what it is and I just need to deal with the reality.

More importantly, though, I wonder what the world will be like when he is 18. Based on current events and trends, it is rather unsettling. Sure, there is much to rejoice with the rise of veganism and corporate social responsibility, but there is so much division in the world now and I wonder how much more divided we will all be in 14 years. Hopefully, by then the era of traditional media controlling the narrative would have well and truly died off and we will have independent journalism shedding light on the facts of the day. Much of the hate and division has been fueled by traditional media outlets and it is so sad to see friends and family cling to their narratives as if their lives depended on it. Journalism died long ago inside these archaic foundry houses of lies and deceit. In order to survive, they had to revert to “clickbait” techniques of doing whatever it took to capture the attention of the naive public, force-feeding them an endless supply of carefully spun stories to lead the “sheeple” down the roads they built. Roads that were paved with corporate ads, selling us the elixirs of youth and vitality and eternal life. All lies and they knew it, but they did not care as long as it meant that for the time being they could keep their doors open and pay for their high rise apartments and day spa visits.

And then this so-called “Pandemic” happened. We all had to hunker down and wear face masks, volunteering to submit ourselves to authoritarianism and symbolically giving up our freedom of speech. My hope is that this is all part of a divine universal grand scheme to reset the planet — reset thinking, reassessing our values, etc, and cleaning out the “filth” that has taken over our consciousness — foremost of which is the traditional media.

Of course, my son has no idea of these things. All he cares about are the animals and his favorite cartoon characters. Life is simple when you are four. And that is how it should be. I will do my best to shelter him from the craziness and guide him to the light of truth. Ultimately, that is a parent’s only purpose. We protect our dependents and pass on whatever wisdom we have gained from life, thus helping the next generation to evolve and become better than we were. Sadly, most parents today are foolishly handing over that responsibility to self-serving corporations that openly minimize the role of parents, encouraging the youth to think for themselves, even though their brains are still developing. These technologically-savvy, but immature youth are now the loudest voices in the “town squares” of the world — Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As a result, we have absolute chaos in the public square. Thankfully, my son has no idea of this madness and I intend to keep it that way, carefully monitoring his exposure to the “poison”

No matter what time period we find ourselves in, parenting is never easy. Every generation has had its challenges and therein lays the beauty of fatherhood and motherhood. Although we have more experience than they do, it is the child that actually makes us a parent in the first place. Their innocent inquiries push us to learn more, be more, and give more. Their inexperience and foolishness push us to be patient and caring. Their mistakes, remind us of our own failings and helps us to stay humble and empathic. In other words, they teach us as much as we teach them.

In their early years, they look upon us as their “superheroes”, in youth as their overbearing parents, as young adults, they tolerate our “old fashion” ways and as mature adults, as their wise counselors. In the end, we are all constantly evolving as souls trapped inside a physical form, trying to find our way through this mire of material life. Finally, when this physical form becomes uninhabitable, we can only hope that we will be ready for the ultimate lesson of life and that our children will be there to witness it.