Is Email Life? And Other Things I'll Tell my Kids

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When my kids are old enough, and definitely after they exist, I'm going to tell them: "Life is email. Life is email, and making new passwords because you've forgotten your old ones. Life is also wailing about all the things you have to do and not doing any of them until it's almost too late. So ya, where was I? Life is email, making passwords and kvetching balanced with procrastination." Then I'll remember after a couple seconds to add, "And contesting parking tickets. And meetings. Lots and lots of meetings. Meetings where people are told to do stuff and then at the next meeting, no one's done it. Meetings where everyone's late and if someone goes to look for someone whose late, the late person arrives and now the seeker is late. Meetings where you'll rush to fill the silence or else you'll think you might drown in it."

I'll tell them "If you're not doing any of these things, you've nailed it. You've made it." I hope it means they've become a traveling mime or a professional surfer. I hope it means they pay an assistant very well to take care of all their emails and forgotten passwords, to do lists and dishes, so they can wax their boards and practice miming what it's like to tight-rope walk over Niagara. Maybe my kids will bring back the megaphone and just blast all their messages through the streets over the air. They'll say, "Forget email. I'm just going to blast this message across a one mile radius and call it good." 

I won't really tell them that life is meetings and email, but I will warn them that it can easily become that if they're not careful. I'll also repeat what E. B. White told us is important in his mouse tale Stuart Little: A shaft of sunlight at the end of a dark afternoon, a note in music, and the way the back of a baby's neck smells if its mother keeps it tidy.