B365V3.59 - Reflections

This time of year always makes me sadly reflective.  Partly because there is no motivation behind it for me, and while in a week or so I am sure many of you will go about making New Year's resolutions, and many of those will be broken within the first week or so of the new year, I am not one to go about making life changes based on a specific date on the calendar.

Still as I scroll my Facebook feed today, seeing lost of pictures of Christmas trees and families happily opening presents, I can not be bothered with trees or decorating, because it would just be for me.  I think about what it would be like to have a family of my own at this time of year, the whole process of putting up a tree and placing presents underneath it, of being woken up at 4am by my kids, as they hope to get an early start on the festivities.  Then a dull sadness overcomes me, as that person is never going to be me.

It has nothing to do with the ability, chances are I could get married some day and it could be with someone who is capable of having children but the math doesn't work out anymore.  Let's face it, at 47, I am closer to my death than my birth at this point.  Even if all of the above were to magically take place in the next couple of hours, which would be pushing the limits of probability to their extreme, I would be 64 by the time my imaginary offspring were learning to drive, well into my 70s while trying to figure out how to pay for their college.  The math no longer adds up on that front.
Not that there haven't been opportunities in the past, but those relationships dissolved for necessary reasons, if a child were to have come from one of them, I can only think how bad it would have been for them.  While there are plenty of single parent families out there, I tend to think of kids much like the old rule of visiting a national park, they should be left in a better place than when you had found them.  I can't see any of those relationships doing anything of the sort for any potential offspring that could have sprung.

So while Facebook is ful of joyous pictures today, it is also a reminder of my life choices to this point, and not necessarily great ones.