Sacred Trust

After dropping my son off at school the other morning, I was watching the other parents, some in fancy cars, some in broken down cars, thinking about the fact that being a parent is a sacred trust. The choices you make in your life, your work, your neighborhood, your partner have an enormous effect on your child.

The choices you make in your life when you're single -- say something like the choice to stay out late, get drunk perhaps, end up hungover the next morning -- just don't cut it when you're a parent. The world is greatly improved by the responsibilities of parenting and by people choosing to become parents.

Some of us choose parenting with all due consideration and seriousness. Some of choose parenting on a hot summer night in the back seat of a car. Most of us realize there is a heroic opportunity in doing a good job of parenting no matter how we got into the situation. There's a quiet heroism to parenting that is hard to describe, especially to non-parents. For one thing, it is very hard work. And for another, it's often thankless, at least on the surface. But there is a deep reward and richness to it over time.