If I had been born with different genes, or had different parents, or been influenced by different role models and teachers, life would probably be different. It's so easy to compare ourselves with others, and for parents to compare their children with their expectations of what they could be. Maybe we envision some barometer of success that is outside of what we are realistically given or can give to others. It seems commendable to try. Without that, it isn't possible to discover the potential that is there. But there may be a great deal of value in a flexible goal, in a new direction, somewhere away from where our eyes were initially fixed.
Facebook is wonderful in that it brings others' lives closer to us than they might have been. I can see friends of mine from the past achieving all sorts of things. Professorships, jobs in ensembles, families, and travels around the world. Sometimes I think some of those things might have been me. Maybe they could have been my life. But I was given a different set of many things, both inherited and modeled. I've found myself in this spot in life, a very good one, but different from other trajectories of lives with which I've interacted.
There are many possibilities for children, but of all the things that I think parents and teachers can give them, love will go the furthest. It will support all the good places that they may find themselves one day.
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