The Life Continuum

The Life Continuum

Life isn’t like that.Life isn’t what you expect it to be and rarely becomes what you are told it’ll become.I am going to be an old dad or a dad again over the age of fifty. I love the idea.I learnt this. I sometimes learnt this the hard way.The myth of life in sections, a start a middle and then the part we are all supposed to dread – the end.So, my news today is this.My darling wife Tamuna is 12-weeks pregnant and we have a new child coming along in April. I can only pray it is more of its mother rather than is rather eccentric rule breaking father.But maybe not at the same time. A mix would be good.The excitement of this part of my life is indescribable despite the fact that this is to be my 5thchild I certainly never expected to feel like this.I am asking questions; Am I trying to play against the natural course of a man or am I simply tapping into a man’s natural course? Maybe a course that has been more forgotten with the endless layers of what should and shouldn’t be done. More an enforcement of the model man that doesn’t really exist?Either way my new child is on its way and this single event is an event that thrills me at every level. Not to play dad again or try to revive my fatherhood again but just the continuum of creation, the newness of life that should be a continuum rather than an expected cut-off point.Life offers no guarantees of longevity. My father had no parent sin his life until late. He met his own father at 19-years of age. Tamuna father died suddenly when she was young. There was no father to help her into adulthood. I read only yesterday a young father under thirty that was taking the course of self-assisted death in Switzerland with his with and two young children there to watch him pass into death.Morbid but a reality. The life guarantee is no guarantee.At 56-years I will have child number five and I am thrilled. Things will be different but they have to be as my own life and own personality has moved on a lot since the young man days. Thius feels not like a good or bad thing it just feels like the right thing for where I am right now.My life continuum continues and I have never felt happier in my life.Is life accidental or by design?To create a life that you love has to be by default created. That is knowing what you want and knowing what you want is coming. That doesn’t mean you sit and meditate about what is coming. You have to take actions to make sure what is coming really is on its way. A farmer can sit and dream about a field of grain as much as he wants yet if he fails to take action and plant the seed that field of grain will never appear.An assessment of life is always need to ensure that life hasn’t passed with regret. I wish I had or I could have done. More of I went for it and it arrived. Life has to be designed and created.I know a man that works from 3 am until 7 pm 7-days a week. He drives a new Mercedes and lives in a large mortgaged house. Yet his children grew up with their father at work and are now all of that age where they no longer want their dad unless they need something. It has gone, passed and he never saw it passing.Life is a continuum by design not accident yet life has to be rethought when it isn’t going the way or direction that works for you. The only way you can know it isn’t working is by the way you are feeling about your life right this very minute.At least twice a year I sit and review my life direction. The measures are simple: Happiness, money and other life structures that need attention.There are times of course when I am just too distracted even to see my own reality yet this is a time for me when I feel laser focused on my next steps.I am thrilled Tamuna and myself and solidifying our love with the creation of a child. She is my woman and can handle me and is the greatest part of my own continuum.How about you?Alan Forrest Smith