Life By Punch List

My wife and I received the word today that our 28-year-old daughter is engaged to be married.  We are thrilled because the young man is tops and they are a great couple.  Then, almost magically, relief set in as another item can now be checked off on my daughter’s punch list which I have arbitrarily assigned without asking her.  It’s a narcissistic bent that I find myself fighting.  If it was good for me, then it must be good for everyone else, including my kids.

 Life’s punch list keeps cropping up in my mind with the next tick mark that I would potentially assign to people who aren’t even married yet, such as are grandkids next?  That punch list is as endless as my ego and just as dangerous, because it makes what we do or have done road marks that are applicable to everyone else.  Examples of punch list living would be to graduate from school, start a family, buy a house, and retire at 65.  If you don’t hit these marks, can we say that you are living properly? 

Our goals in life are often taken from our parents such as, vote partisan or not, join or don’t join a union, have X number of kids, and drive a certain kind of car.  Every time we reach a milestone on life’s punch list, we start looking for the next and sadly because the list is as endless as our egos, we are never satisfied with what we have.  And if we fail at one of our parent’s goals, and it happens often, we think poorly of ourselves.  I try to remind myself that my kids are not me and that my life’s benchmarks are not theirs, and that their lives are not to be judged by my set of tick marks. 

 Then there is the list of things that we haven’t done, the more sinister checklist.  This is the list of things that makes us think we are successful because we didn’t do them.  Examples would be getting pregnant out of wedlock or too young, or going to jail, or failing to make the grade in college or the military, and heaven forbid participating in a homosexual relationship.  If someone we know does one of the above things, and the list is again potentially endless, they are not successful and we judge them poorly or worse.  This list is the most dangerous list because it establishes walls around groups of people and those that they accept as equals.  I remember the movie "Fiddler on the Roof," in which the father declared his daughter dead because she married a gentile she loved.  Another sad example of punch list living.

 So today I am so very happy, and I intend on staying that way regardless of how our children move forward in their lives.  They are happy, so am I, and that is all I can ask!