Doing What I Love

My roommate, Courtney, posted this video on facebook today, and it spawned a long train of thoughts for me. Alan Watts is a British philosopher who died some 40 years ago, but years after his death his video speech is circulating the internet. I listened to his words and was stuck by the profound message he delivered. He asks the listener what you would do for a living if money didn't matter; he then goes on to explain that working at a job that you do not like for the only purpose of gaining more money, you will be unsatisfied. If it's all about the money, then you work in order to go on living, but living is doing what you don't like doing, so why not do what you love?

I thought about what I love and what I would do if money weren't an issue: I would bake, read and write. Wait, that's what I am going to do! I thought, man, I'm lucky to be able to do what makes me happy.

Then something else crossed my mind that turned my thinking around. What about being a mom? Isn't that what I should want to do more than anything else? If money wasn't an issue, shouldn't the obvious answer to what you want to do for your life be to be able to stay with your family. I felt a little abashed at my first response to that question. That's not what I am supposed to want! I am supposed to want to be a stay at home mom. Don't get me wrong, I do want that eventually, but I also want to use my college education. Then it dawned on me, my thinking was so very narrow and naive as to what being a mom entails. Baking, reading and writing are not exclusively work place characteristics. Duh. I felt so dim after realizing this. In fact, I will probably learn more as a mother than I have in five years of college instruction.

Actually, being a mom is combining what I am training to do and what I want to do. I love cooking breakfast. Although I am not enticed by breakfast foods, I love the breakfast smell, people and idea of sitting down, eating and being together before the day begins. I love to read, and I love to read aloud. I will never forget the sound of my dad's voice as he read Drover's lines from Hank the Cowdog. I love to write; i write better than I speak. Speaking of writing, I have a huge paper I should be writing...

I honestly cannot wait until I can cook breakfast for my brown-eyed children, read aloud to them the wonderful adventures of Hank and Drover and write notes from the tooth fairy, Skippy the Elf and the Easter Bunny.