Weekends and dreams for my children

We just had the loveliest three-day weekend. Most times, even at weekends, we're busy running around with the kids to parks and grocery shopping and anything else we think they may enjoy. This time around, we managed to spend lots of time with old friends and then just hang out together at home with the kids and my folks, stuff our faces with some good food, read and watch a couple of movies after the kids fell asleep. Perhaps it's the onset of summer which created this wonderful effect of time stretching so that last night, though it had only been a 3 day weekend, we felt as relaxed as if we'd been gone on a long break.

Kind of makes me realise how painful the corporate grind is. When you start off with the MBA and stuff, it all looks wonderful - you're earning more by Year 3 than your dad who is at the senior-most rank in government, you have a bunch of friends and you all hang out and party every weekend. But then you go and complicate life by having kids and suddenly realise that few things compensate for spending time away from them. One of them is if you really enjoy the work that you do and it gives you a high. But even that doesn't make up for the rest of the pettifogging silliness that is part of corporate life, and that you can't get away from, try as you might - the politics, the jostling for attention, the need to demonstrate that you're working hard by staying late. Even if you don't succumb to any of these, just having to brush shoulders with these ridiculous aspects of life makes you wish you'd become a school teacher or better yet, an artist or something.

For my kids, for all the benefits in terms of lifestyle and comfort that corporate life bestows and despite the fact that I really enjoy the work I'm doing right now and find it very creative, I hope and wish that they never get into a corporate job. I hope they find something that they can do on their own, which is creative, soul-satisfying and in which they can call their own shots to the extent possible...Kite designers, singers, artists, writers...