Categories: uncategorized
Date: 28 December 2007 11:56:33
When does ambition become pure selfishness? It's a question that I'm thinking about quite deeply at the moment.
I have a dream which I want to pursue. I know that should I manage to make this become reality I am ready to make the sacrifices involved, yet I am not a lone unit. I have Third Party to think about and I am aware that pursuing my ambitions and dreams may come at a cost in terms of me fulfilling all I perhaps should as a mum.
It's a tension I am to some extent constantly aware of but at the moment I need to decide which direction to go in and if required how long to put my dreams on hold. For the first time in my life I am, I think, truly aware of the costs which have been involved in the past, aswell as the benefits, to Third Party when I have followed my heart into the next step of my life and embarked on some academic adventure.
I have largely lived the middle-class feminist ideal of being able to have it all (qualification, career and child) and have been fortunate in having been able to do so. Yet it has, I am aware, come at a cost that the voices of the feminist establishment failed to mention. I have a lovely daughter who is a credit to me and whom I love more than anybody or anything else, but she hasn't always had mum at those crucial moments in her life. Oh mum might have been in the room, but mums head was often in a book or trying to wrestle with an essay title when it would have been better focused playing a board game, reading a story or simply being.
This time I know the adventure I want to go on but I am aware of the fact teenagers need their mums to be to somehow help pick up the pieces when it all falls apart. Even children bought up to be independent parts of communities rather than simple families need some stability. Third Party is getting to an age when she will be studying for the bits of paper which can act as passports into achieving dreams and ambitions and she needs her mum to be there to support her.
I could do with some real wisdom before I go chasing this particular rainbow.