Our children are on a journey, just as we are. From the moment they are born their life is heading in a particular direction. We guide, direct, set an example, encourage as best as we know how… but ultimately it is their journey alone.

Of course we have a lot to answer for in the influence we have on our children’s direction. Genetics aside, many children grow up to be mini versions of their parents example.

From hobbies to holidays, work ethic to worries, our children either accept our ideas and idiosyncrasies as their own or reject the way we are as par of the course.

This doesn’t mean we have ultimate responsibility or ‘blame’ for where our children head or the experiences in life our children choose to have.

Children from the same family, with presumably very similar childhoods, have often turned out incredibly different from each other. They will even remember certain events from very different perspectives.

When siblings get together and reminisce there are often differences in memories and perceptions of how things were within their families and childhoods.

Our children will quickly form their own perceptions of the world they live in. They will delete certain memories, perhaps unknowingly, distort their memories based on the emotions that the memories have evoked and, definitely, generalize life in an effort to categorize the millions of moments that are a collage of who and what they are.

And there they go, wandering into life’s experiences thinking and feeling based on where they have come from and what they have experienced along the path of life.

Some form the opinion that life is good and other’s that life is fraught with challenge. There are the positive people and the negative nay say-ers. Most people fall somewhere in the middle.

Regardless of a child’s (or adult’s) journey there are periods of life where they will float on a high or slump to an all time low. They love life’s experiences or hate them and ultimately fall back into the comfort zone where life carries on without too many insurmountable cares.

For many this is good enough. For others there is an unrest that troubles the water like a passing wind in autumn. It causes them to seek for change.

At any moment in the journey direction and focus can be changed. Perhaps the best we can do for our children is to teach them that being somewhere that makes them unhappy is a good indication that they need to take stock and take action. The well-known saying teaches that if a person always does what they’ve always done than they’ll always have what they’ve always had.

It can be debated that this is as it should be.

The circle of life. People who have children. Children who become parents. And the whole of humanity that travels parallel with the next generation.

Hand in hand… for a time.