Comment by billforsternz
1 day ago
Good post but the whole "buy time to see your child graduate, get married or give birth" trope is quite frankly very annoying.
Older people have more going on, and more reasons to live, than whatever the next generations are up to. Even if we have children.
I had curative (hopefully, presumably) kidney cancer surgery 11 years ago. So far I've enjoyed travelling, socializing, working, coding, chess and other hobbies in the extra time I've been granted and I hope for decades more time to enjoy life. I don't have children. never aspired to it.
Sorry for the rant!
I have kids.
I also travel, socialize, work, code, play video games, solve puzzles, etc. Love all that shit.
I'd be sad to "miss" some novels, or to never see the Ocarina remake, etc. Or just the time I spend piddling around with things.
But I think if I was about to die and an advance bought me a few months of moderate quality life, it'd mostly be about seeing my kids cross milestones. I don't imagine I'd spend nearly as much time cranking through those things.
Understood. No doubt I would be similarly inclined if I'd gone down that path in life. My beef is that I feel this is a trope that gets rolled out without question, and it doesn't even bother paying lip service to the diversity of human experience.
I feel similarly whenever I hear about someone expressing empathy with someone, but apparently only after realizing they are someone's daughter/brother/sister/mother whatever type of relative. What's that about? I feel empathy for any innocent victim, they're human, they're living a life, maybe a very enjoyable life even if they don't have a single relative.
It's a trope for a reason. Having kids does shit to your brain and breaks it in a bunch of ways you cannot anticipate. For better and for worse.