Life changing moments...

[dcasper70]

Avoiding the obvious (births, deaths, etc), post a defining moment in your life. Something that truly altered the way you viewed yourself, or your world.

A personal paradigm shift.

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My wife & I have been together since 95. For the first 9 years of that we were convinced that we would never have children. We enjoyed spending our money on ourselves. We took 2 or 3 vacations a year, bought whatever toys we wanted, did what we wanted, when we wanted, and really enjoyed ourselves. We fully expected to be the best aunt and uncle in the universe. We wanted our parenting friends to be jealous and live vicariously through us, and for the most part they were and did.

I know I had this outlook due to my uncle and aunt. They are the wealthiest people we know.
At 60, he's been retired for 10 years and golfs every possible day. She is one of the top jazz agents in the country, representing many names that all of you would instantly recognize. They eat at the best restaurants, hang out backstage at the coolest concerts, travel around the world and generally seem to love life.

Basically, we wanted to be like them.

Three years ago, he took me to Mrytle Beach for a weekend of golf (on him of course).
Somewhere over the mid-atlantic states I asked him what was his biggest regret in life.
His response was choosing to not have children.
He said it was such a big, painful void in his life that all his money and posessions and experiences would never come close to filling. He went on to further divulge how much he has come to envy what my mother and father have had with my brother, sister and me, and how his most enjoyable of all experiences nowadays is the time he is able to spend with all of his nieces and nephews.
He said he'd trade, in a heartbeat, all of his wealth to be poor with one child.


There are few moments in my past that I can look back on and see my life alter. That is one.
It truly blew my mind that the life I may have wanted, may not be all it's cracked up to be. The person I wanted to emulate would give everything to <u>not</u> be the person I wanted to emulate.

After serious discussions with my wife, we realized that of our two chices, there is no way we'd regret one of them.
How we viewed our future life changed within a matter of days. We're both amazed at just how quickly this happened.

Our daughter is only 14 days old (yeah, that must be shocking to some of you [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]). She was born six minutes after midnight. I woke up my aunt &amp; uncle at ten past.
I already know it is the greatest thing I have ever done. Had she been a boy, I would have named him after my uncle. She would not be here had it not been for that conversation.
I make sure my uncle knows this.