conformity...

I feel like I've uploaded this picture picture.

I'm certain that I've blogged on this before.

I know that I need to hear this again...

If I'm not careful, I'll end up doing something just because it's what I do.

We're having a bit of a rough time as our kids age with managing the expectations of some of our neighbors, and casual acquaintances.  The root of it?  We homeschool our kids and I'm self-employed.

That means that by ten AM each day my kids are outside playing and I'm sitting with my wife having our second cup of coffee.  The rest of the neighborhood is empty, the parents off to work, the kids off to school.

And we're out there whooping it up.

It seems to me that, sometimes, we push back against people or systems or things that are different from us not because the different thing, person, or system is deficient in and of itself but because the difference between that thing and us illuminates something that's missing in us.

And, Lord knows, if there's a thing we don't like it's the dark parts being illuminated.

So you get this pressure to conform, to be just like everybody else.

'Cause there's comfort in numbers and misery loves company.

That's why our kids, who are being raised to learn to do what they love not what they must, are rubbing some of the folk around us the wrong way.  And my sweet wife is feeling a bit conflicted about it--'cause at heart she likes to be liked and likes to please those around her and is duty-oriented and responsible--so I had to remind her that the whole point of our life is to raise our kids to be the opposite of conformists.  

So we drank our coffee and I gave her a pep-talk and I thought about you.  Thought I'd remind you that you live one time and that that life is best spent in-love rather than on a treadmill.

I hope it's working out for you friend.

T