8400

I posted a question on both Facebook and Google+ earlier in regards to which is a more noble feat, serving ones country or being in your children's lives. One of the conclusions I came to is that circumstances will vary, and the choice is extremely personal. Now I will never begrudge somebody for having a different opinion on this subject than I do, but for me, being in my kids' lives is a must. Given my views on foreign policy I could never justify leaving my children for anything unless there was a clear and imminent threat to them. I know what it is like to have a father that was not always there and I could never leave my children. When I made the choice to become a parent, I took on the obligation of being there for my children no matter what. Children are only children for such a little amount of time. I couldn't imagine not being there when they need their daddy. As it is with my older child, I missed so much because I was not in a relationship with her mother after she was born. I do my best to make up for that, but nothing can replace those once in a life time moments, like first steps or first words. You can try to capture those moments on video or in pictures, but nothing replaces being there for them and I owe my children to be there to experience life with them. Again, no disrespect to the men and women in the military, I commend and thank you for all you do, but if you've made the choice to be a parent, then you need to be in your child's life as much as possible. Now (and this is where politics start to come into play), the argument can be made that protecting your country from the dangers in the world is protecting your children, and thus justification can be made for entering the military. However, I strongly believe that if we worried more about ourselves and less about policing the world those dangers wouldn't be so severe. Our arrogance as a country is what brings on the hatred from our enemies. If we maintained a strict policy of not interfering with the ongoings in other countries unless explicitly asked to do so, the threat to our way of life would be dramatically less.
So basically what I'm saying is if you mind your own business, and everybody else minded their own business we could all do right. Life has become far too complicated and we all need to take a step back because we've complicated it ourselves. To the parents, and I mean parents, not sperm or egg donors, or half timers, but to the full time parents, you are the heroes. I'll get off my soapbox now and prepare for the flack.