Those Darn Differences

Differences. Aren’t they annoying? Isn’t it just so lame when you want to do something different than your husband for a date night? Isn’t it hard when you’re crying because you think your husband is ignoring you, but in reality he’s just got his mind on a really hard school project? Isn’t it a pain when your husband doesn’t mind being late for things but it drives you nuts? Yeah, sometimes these things are annoying and hard and painful. But who cares? I’m grateful for the differences my husband and I have. Our differences seem to coordinate so well that they help round us out as a couple. I might think that going out to dinner is the perfect date, but if we always did that, we’d be broke. My husband might think that grabbing a movie from Redbox and eating popcorn is the perfect date, but if we always did that we’d get fat from the popcorn. I may think he’s ignoring me and get all emotional, and he might be too focused on homework, but this gives us the chance to learn to be selfless and mindful of someone else.

I recently took a little personality test for one of my classes. It wasn’t anything big or scientific, but it got me thinking about differences. The test had questions like “Are you good at math?” Then it had questions such as “Can you discern how other people are feeling?” These two traits, being logical and being emotionally aware, are completely different. But where the heck would the world be if only one of them existed? Without math, not only would we not have complicated things like computers and space shuttles, we wouldn’t even have seemingly simple things like money or compasses. And yet on the other hand, if there wasn’t compassion in the world, we would have a lot more war, a lot less fun and games, and a lot more disease. If no one had compassion what would motivate people to become the doctors and scientists who cure sickness and save lives?

Differences are so crucial to the world that we live in. They are crucial to our communities, and they are so incredibly crucial to our families. I’m so grateful for the differences between my husband and I. I’m glad we are the same with regards to what we believe, what we think it most important, and what we want to do with our lives, but I’m glad that we have those small differences that make our lives interesting!

The Overpopulation Trickery

Babies. The world needs more of them. But what about the overpopulation of the earth, you ask? Well, sorry to tell you, but the population of the world is going to peak in 2065, then it's going to decrease exponentially just as it has risen exponentially over the past two hundred years or so. Yes, there are more people alive in the earth now than at any other time in history, but the biggest reason for that isn't that people are having too many babies. It is that people are living longer now than ever before. Because people are now living into their 80's and 90's instead of their 40's and 50's, there are more people. In fact, contrary to popular belief, people in most developed countries are not giving birth to enough people to replace them. The "replacement rate," or the number of children that each woman must have in order to keep the population at a steady rate is 2.13. The .13 is to take into account those children who die before reaching adulthood. But in America, the fertility rate, or average number if children that a woman gives birth to in her lifetime, is 2.01. In most European countries, it is much lower. Spain's fertility rate is 1.43, Switzerland's is 1.54. Latvia is 1.35. In Germany, the fertility rate is 1.43, and the government actually pays people to have children. 

Some people think that lowering the amount of people in the world is a good thing. But if you really think about it, it's not. Basically, if there are a lot more old people than there are young people, the economy will crash. There won’t be enough young people to generate the revenue for Medicare, Social Security, etc. There won’t be enough doctors to care for the elderly. China is finally realizing this, so they changed their one child policy so that Chinese families can now have two children.

Besides all that boring stuff, who on earth would want to live in a world without babies? There is no other thing that I can think of that inspires people to work harder to build a better world than when a parent looks at their child and thinks, “I want him to have a better life than I do.” You can’t look at a baby without getting a happy, hopeful feeling inside. Babies are the future, not the past.

Families. What makes up a family? In the past, the definition of a family was simple. It was a mom, a dad, and their children, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins mixed in. Now, there are so many definitions of a family that you can't even really have a definition or someone will get offended.

But I don't really want to talk about the numbers so much. When I first started this blog, I thought I could be super objective and that I could write in a secular way about families. However, I've discovered that I can't really do that, at least not all the time. Because for me, families aren't just a fundamental unit of society. They are a fundamental reason for life. I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and we believe that families are a central reason for being alive in this world. I believe that if you do it right, families make you happy. I know that my family makes me happy, both the family that I grew up in, and the family that I started when I got married to my husband in April. I believe that a family that is made up of a mom, a dad, and (hopefully) children is the best model. The thought of the millions of people in this world who don't have a family to go through life with makes me so, so sad. My family means everything to me, and my greatest desire in life is to have a happy family. That is what I want to do. I would like to have a career as a Child Life Specialist or simply a preschool teacher, but I won't be disappointed if that doesn't happen. In fact, I will be disappointed if it does, because that will mean that for some reason, I wasn't able to have kids or I wasn't able to be a stay-at-home mom. I'll talk more about that in my next post. Anyways, there are a few of my thoughts about family.