It has stopped raining now, somebody has turned off that giant TV screen that was only moments ago hovering over bed! The sun is shining in sky, radio has come on with some gentle morning music and auto start percolator in kitchen is sending fresh smells of coffee wafting up stairs. It has stopped raining and normality has returned, with it has come sense and sensibility, understanding that unless I keep up with world I will never be able to give my son future that he deserves! I have to be same as everyone else outside in big wide world. I have to be fashionable and trendy, to have what others have and not to be an outcast or to fall by wayside.

Soon my son will start to crawl. Then he will walk. Then he will want to be fashionable, to fit in and be like all other children of his age! He will want to have beeping and squeaking toys; he’ll need to be connected, to have an email address and to have latest Nokia phone at his side. He’ll scream unless he can wear baggy trousers that seem so ugly yet are so ‘in’, he will cry unless he can have a game boy, watch TV, listen to his MP3 and he will want all that is at height of fashionable materialism of those his age!

It has stopped raining and I have everything. I have a wonderful family whom I love with my heart and my soul. But I also have latest in digital technology, membership at smartest health club in town, a motorbike of mean proportions and a gardener to do weeding! I also have a ten speed lawnmower (the next door neighbor still has older 8 speed model) a pension fund and a platinum American express card!!

My wife hates Monopoly anyway!

So however educated and knowledgeable a person is: not all is as straightforward as it seems!

I love my son. He is such a character full of life and energy, full of cheek and smile!

He has taught me that adults are so bogged down with trying to wade through life that we can no longer enjoy that which is around us! We walk around and through daily life with chips, worries and problems weighing us down as if whole world is resting precariously on our backs. Looking at my son, I realize that what we do in life is crazy; we grow older in a manner that builds problems on top of problems. We are all so desperate to be at top of ladder as regards material possessions or status, working harder and harder to earn money to buy latest in technological advance, so rushed and harried to get there before next door neighbor that we forget what life is all about. I buy my son toys, I bought him this all singing, all dancing red thing that had mirrors and handles and all sorts of jingling things on it. The lady in shop told me that it was most popular toy they had in stock and that it would keep baby occupied for hours. When I gave it to my son he looked at it with immediate wonderment, picked it up and neatly dropped it over side of his cot! He is only six months old for ……..sake! Anyway, he dropped it, thus discarding this ultra modern toy from his life and since then he has neither looked at it nor even acknowledged its presence. He loves remote control though, even better he loves this tiny little one-dollar squeaky toy that looks like a pregnant hippopotamus!

My son taught me that it is only our own fault that we live way we do, burdened and weighted down. So much pleasure can be gained from so little, yet as adults we want so much more yet never quite reach a degree of satisfaction or happiness that can be maintained for longer than a day!

My son also taught me that he can fill a nappy faster than I can recover from changing last one, babies really control their parents rather than us controlling them and screaming is closest emotion to laughing hysterically!

My son also told me to love unhindered and without thought or care for anything else in world.

Thanks for everything but pram son!