In the middle of the day, I usually pick up my 8-year-old son from school. “Why doesn’t mommy ever pick me up?” he asked me the other day. “Because it works.” – “And you, it turns out, do not work?” Iron children’s logic. For many weeks I have been trying to explain to him what a freelancer is.
“I work when I want, and, most importantly, I have no boss. I’m very lucky to be able to pick you up every day from school.” That’s what I told him. And he answered me: “Yes, but I would like to have a nanny. Like Max.” Max is his best friend.
My son loves to tell me about other kids, telling me what they’re up to and then stating that they’re “great lucky.” In vain I try to present the situation differently and explain to him that Max or Alex would certainly be happy if they lived the same way as we do.
I’m so zealous in this that I involuntarily stray into self-praise: “Here you play PSP, but they probably don’t have a PSP!” But nothing helps: others always have something better than us.
The son has simply reached the age at which children discover the world in a new way. And this discovery begins with the desire not to be different from others.
My cousin, who is now in the prime of adolescence, is going through the exact opposite situation. Most teenagers want more than anything to be different – just to leave their mark on the universe. The one I watch in his own family has decided to become a goth. But in this, as he explains to me, there are fundamental points.
Growing up, many of us strive primarily to be different from our parents.
It turns out that some of us are able to literally ruin the bright idea of black. “See that creepy piercing in his elbow? Nobody walks like that!” Clearly, this elbow has no chance. And, of course, everything that others do is “completely sucks”. Everyone around suckers, and no one likes him.
I try to remember myself in his years, and it seems to me that then I wanted only one thing: not to be myself. Of course, in this state you need to live for some time to become a writer.
In childhood, it often seems that others are “coolly lucky.” Then comes adolescence, and these others fall into “complete crap.”
And what happens with further growing up?
Many of us strive above all to be different from our parents. By the way, my father seems to live beyond age, he does not envy anyone, although he criticizes everyone. I, when I am old, would just like to see my son happy – if one day in the middle of the day I decide to look into his office.