Drive Slow
What happens to your dreams when your life’s purpose veers from self-fulfillment to the growth of your family? Do you happily trade them in for precious moments of celebration? Intimate times of comfort and stability?
Most of all, does life shift from fourth to second gear easily?
My life is changing right before me. I never really spent much time in the fast lane, as much as I occasionally and carefully signaled to merge into it before rapidly approaching an exit of an untimely relationship, a dangerous decision, or a sustained need for the impulsive.
But now I’m coasting, drifting over into the slow lane of enjoying life, and cherishing the joys of married life and a pending fatherhood. But you know, it’s not like its anything I’m doing consciously. Even in my pressing times of wanting to go out and hang with the guys, or in wanting to hit the town, I find that home has this unique pull on me that’s not altogether, unnatural.
You have to understand, not ever being the kind of guy that was a social butterfly, it’s not a bad thing to want to be at home. But it was always my choice to go out or not; to make myself available to the world or to let the world wait for my terms and my time. And now that the choice is diminishing by the second, I find it odd that I don’t really care.
Perhaps its a hard wiring that husbands and fathers activate when parenthood is looming. And it’s weird, because every other guy in similar circumstance is likely counting down the days until total freedom will be compromised. But it’s not so bad, slowing down gives you more time to appreciate the things passing you by.
