There is an increasing emotional gap developing between myself and my children. It is disturbing, but it may not be permanent, significant, or even malleable. That is, I am in general feeling alienated and irritated. It seems I am always looking at interactions critically and with irritation. I perceive disrespect when there is likely nothing personal.
I began this post because I wanted to explore a potential explanation for my discontent. In my working years, there were many hours of the day devoted to activities of seemingly clear purpose. My mind was occupied with attending to obligations, planning, analysis, and interaction. The days seemed filled with endless possibilities involving my thought, decision, and action.
There were rhythms to this life that allowed the focus to monitor a range of time frames. For example, there was a long term goal of saving for retirement. In early years, the goal was abstract and perhaps even beyond comprehension. My approach to such problems is to assume the goal is essentially unattainable, but like much of life, a suitable outcome would be achieved through continual effort and some realistic near-term action.
Home ownership was a conventional activity that felt applicable to the retirement goal. We needed a place to live anyway, and home ownership engaged a time frame in the range of retirement planning. A thirty-year mortgage brought the abstract into the actual. It was a commitment and something I could envisage of happening. With modest assumptions about land value, the ownership would translate into an asset in the value range of income replacement. As well, I had seen this method of wealth accumulation work for my parents.
Retirement savings seemed impossible at the start of my working career. Besides the difficulty in rationalizing savings versus meeting every day needs, I had a pension plan with the large company that would be adequate for retirement. But the large company presented an opportunity I could not ignore. They agreed to add 50% to my savings up to 6% of my pre-tax wages. The government agreed to allow the savings to be deducted from my wages so that my income tax decreased. I could not ignore these incentives, and so we learned to live with 94% of whatever salary I made. These two actions helped me feel satisfied I was attending to this long-range important issue.
With three children, another actual problem that seemed unmanageable was paying for college. The estimates for cost ran into hundreds of thousands of dollars, and these estimates were actually experienced. In this task, we did not develop a savings plan. Instead, we decided to manage the situation as it came. We forced the children away from expensive private colleges to help manage the costs, Somehow, we covered thirteen years of costs. Two of the children worked while at school, but their earnings never contributed to basic living expenses or the tuition and fees.
Beyond these two abstractions, we felt the responsibility of raising the children, caring for parents, helping children enter adulthood, marriage, and parenthood. We were enthusiastic in these activities as they seemed to be the point of living. We felt confident about a satisfactory outcome and cognizant of the attention and effort required. The planning and execution formed the basis of daily activity (outside of work). I know in retrospect, I cannot recall fully the discomforts and the anxieties of those former times. Today, they seem so full of purpose and meaning, whatever the difficulties. Life was as we chose.
The 'struggles' of daily life were not without respites and recreation. Indeed, vacationing and communing with family and friends was another satisfying and happy focus of living. We enjoyed our family activities on a daily basis. Meals together, school work, television, phone calls, and vacations were perhaps the most sacred of existence. For me, these dimensions of life were the reason for everything, even if they were at times subservient to the work and requirements. At any time, they became top priority. Such hierarchy contributed to a feeling of agency and balance. Life had clarity. Strangely, government and politics were of low concern. Our preoccupation of caring for ourselves, our broader family, and our friends consumed attention leaving little energy for the intractable problems of society.
Contrast this past life with the present. With respect to the long-term projects of retirement and family rearing, all is solved. Work has ceased. Social Security and Medicare are providing some basic needs. The children are more or less caring for themselves, albeit without the same perspective about attending to the long-range issues of saving, retirement, etc. Three of four parents are gone, and the remaining parent asks little from us. Incomprehensibly, we have amassed a small fortune that leaves us mortgage-free, and with savings such that income from investments grow faster than the rate we can spend. It was not a goal, but it appears we made it to this point.
The abstractions and uncertainties of 'the future' are now concrete and certain. There is no longer effort towards any of the former goals. We participate as we can with our children. However, our former position as major shapers in their lives and development are long past, as we anticipated and is only proper. The grandkids are influenced only slightly, again, as we intended. It is not our place or role to parent them.
Is it a paradox that I find myself in agitation and discontent? What is wrong with me?
