OK it sounds like I've gone all philosophical today and I sort of have, but in a practical way. I have always believed that if we all consider what we can do for our society/community/each other (call it what you want) and that if everybody thought about this for a few minutes then the world would be a better place. At school we learnt about treating others as you would like to be treated. It's always seemed like a good maxim to me. It might be a religous phrase (I went to a Church of England Primary school) but I don't mean it in a religious way. I just mean we should all think about how we would like people to behave towards us and try to behave that way ourselves. For example:
1. I don't want to wade through litter when I'm out and about so I don't drop litter.
2. I don't like children running around me screaming in restaurants so I don't let my children do it to other people.
3. Equally when my children are behaving perfectly nicely and, well, like children, when I'm out and about I don't expect to get dirty looks or people making snidey comments so I don't do it (and it wouldn't occur to me to do it but sadly it seems some people do feel the need to do this).
4. I'd get very annoyed if someone parked blocking the entrance to my house so I wouldn't do it to someone else.
I mean things like that. However, I do have a tendency to take this a bit far and sometimes feel crippled by what I think I should do. My Dad in particular was always very keen on teaching lessons about the impact of our actions on others and I think I probably took it on board a bit too much.
Ages ago I had a conversation with a friend which started about reading Harry Potter books (which I love). It moved on to discussing whether everybody has an obligation to society to make the best use of their talents. She felt everyone should push themselves to realise their possible potential. This has always stayed with me.
So if you have a gift for rocket science are you obliged to share this with the world to enhance rocket sciencism (or whatever it is)? Or is it OK for you to decide that yes you understand rocket science but actually want you want to do is be a landscape gardener?
Or to use another example on a similar theme, I am a qualified solicitor and in order to do this I had to do a 3 year degree followed by a postgraduate course called an LPC. This cost my parents thousands of pounds as they kindly paid my fees, my accommodation when I lived at uni, bought me books, and gave me money for my day to day costs. I was extremely fortunate to have this support. So if after 10 years I decide that actually I really don't want to be a solicitor am I not fulfilling my obligations to my parents after all they'd done?
Incidentally I suppose SAHMs could become caught up in this kind of argument in that by extending the above you could say should they continue at an important job if they have a talent for it? This is not something that has every occurred to me when discussing this issue. My view has always been that SAHMs have the hardest, most demanding and important job of all.
These are all the musings of a mad woman who lies awake wondering if she's done the right thing by her family, her neighbours and Joe Bloggs in a neighbouring town.
Last week I had a conversation with a different friend who is very firmly of the view that the only obligation you have in life is to make yourself happy and whatever that takes you need to do. She thinks if you're happy you'll automatically put things back in the world and that this makes the world go round. If she's right then to me that's something of an epiphany. You may at this point be thinking, well that's obvious. This probably means you sleep better than me!
If I have actually managed to explain what I mean then I would be really interested to hear everyone's comments on this. Feel free to tell me I'm utterly mental as I already know this and I may actually find this quite freeing!
No comments:
Post a Comment