“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
One of the bigger quandaries for me as a father has been trying to decide how much to tell my son about some of my adventures as a teenager and young adult. I find that on the one hand while I want him to know that I’ll understand if life throws him some bizarre curves yet at the same time I don’t necessarily want him to make some of the more foolhardy choices I made. I do know that in all probability he will make his own. The question is how much can I tell him without romanticizing, with letting him know how difficult some of it was and how while I have very few regrets I would hope that he need not need some of the more difficult lessons that I had to learn. But then I know eventually he will hear all of the stories. Of course by that time, he may have kids of his own and his own choices about how much of his past to share.
Blessings, G
Shaping Electric Dreams by G A Rosenberg 