I dunno
but I'll keep wondering
There’s a quote that I read by Bertrand Russell when I was a kid and I think it was a really formative experience as my existence is filled with doubts.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
~ Bertrand Russell
I do love Russell. Here’s the other quote of his that I live by:
In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
~ Bertrand Russell
So. with that stage set I’ll tell a little story about my morning and open a window into my brain. After finishing breakfast this morning I was jumping in the shower before work and I got a message from Squirt’s teacher. He had forgotten a blanket/stuffed animal today for some fake campout activity and the teacher sent us a message asking if we’d be able to bring one. This would have to be me as Spouse is off to the dentist and I finally have a couple hours to actually program before my 6 hours of red tape meetings. And I’ve been pushing Squirt more and more to build mnemonics for remembering things. I am a big fan of consequences and I think we are wired to learn from pain and anguish. Pain is a teacher.
Which is a complicated way of saying I considered not bringing him the blanket and chalk it up to a character-building exercise. Then again, my kid is ten years old and I am perfectly capable of taking 20 minutes after my shower to drop off a blanket and a stuffed animal. But the entire ride there I’m asking myself if I’m doing the right thing.
Am I making the right choice to prepare him for a world that can and will be unforgiving if you can’t remember things? Is this the right decision as a parent? Am I doing the right thing?
I dunno.
And then I get to the school and I can’t walk straight to the front office anymore. Why? Because the elementary school has installed metal detectors. You know, because kids and adults might walk into my child’s school with a gun and murder a bunch of people and possibly my ten year old. So here, again, is the question: Am I doing the right thing by sending him to public school?
I dunno.
I’m a stats guy. I’m well aware that the chances of a school shooting in my kid’s elementary school are vanishingly small. I’m aware that the drive to school this morning was much more likely to kill him than being in school. But I still had a visceral reaction as I walked through the maze with the metal detector. I’m putting my child in a place where I cannot defend him and he can be killed because America has a seriously fucked up gun culture. Is it the right decision as a parent to send him here?
I dunno.
I hope Russell is right about the intelligence/doubt thing because...man...given all these doubts I must be really intelligent, right?
Anyways. Squirt got his blanket. I walked through the metal detector. And then I came back and I wrote this up rather than do the programming I had planned on doing this morning. And someday I’ll come back and I’ll read this and I’ll remember that, no, there’s never been a time in my life when I was sure I was making the right decisions.
I just don’t know if my decisions are the right one. None of us do.
But I like to pretend just worrying about them at least gives me a step in the right direction.
