My childhood was one of survival and resilience. How can I model a joyful life for my kids?
The Guardian · Eleanor Gordon-Smith ·
Start with the feeling, not the activities, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Making more room for enjoyment is also making more room for your actual self
I’m a child of first-generation immigrants and have always carried a story of survival and resilience. My parents were part of a “lost generation” who sacrificed a lot to put us all through university. There was a very defined path for success, some of which I followed and some not. I married outside of race; I made work choices for financial stability. I don’t know how to enjoy things that other people seem to. Hobbies, travelling, home renovations … I look at those like “what is the point?”
I want to say it’s because my upbringing was not full of leisure activities; my parents only allowed us to focus on academic topics. Now that I’m a mother though, I wonder how I can role model some of this “living well for its own sake” for my children. It’s hard to find simple joys actually joyful. Growing up, everything needed to be “applied” towards something, and it feels that mentality is informing everything I do. Any advice on how to break free and live in the moment?
Eleanor says: Sometimes the means take over the end. Like a strangler fig. We start out doing something as a way of achieving something else we value – as a means to an end. But over time, it takes up so much of our schedule and mental prioritisation that it starts to twist and wrap around the things we actually value. It crowds them out, competes for vital nutrients, until it wins. It becomes the thing we value for its own sake; the means become the end.
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