Live and Let Live (2)

As promised, here’s the second snippet and we’re still following the same mother-daughter pair as last time:

“I don’t know why you love mucking around so much, you do it day and night. You are only in the thirties. You’ve got plenty of time to muck around later in life. Your priority now should be making money.” Right, as if I could know for a certainty that I would live the standard old age. Even if I could, who is to say that I would think a life living how she wants me to live- getting and keeping a secure full time 9-5 job and keep having numbers piling up in my bank account, would be superior to a life of “mucking around”. Besides, who says that I intend to muck around for life? I’m just not ready to move yet, especially if I’m being pushed. And here we go again, the “should” business again. I have no idea why she gets the idea that there is only one correct way of living, one correct thing to strive for at a particular life stage. For her, everything is money, money. It’s almost like she feels that one would starve without enough savings. But really, I’ve still got enough savings to last me another year. So why should I rush into a job, any job just for the sake of money? She just doesn’t get it that, to me, it is far more important to me to at least not hate my job rather than just racking in pay from week to week. And if I tell her that, she’s gonna sneer at me and say that I’ve never appreciated fully the responsibility of managing day-to-day finance for a household. Right, I haven’t but I know that one could trim down on living expenses any time one puts one’s mind to. But I can’t be bothered telling her. Every time we try to resolve our differences in perspective, we end up arguing. And she’s much better at arguing than I am. Twisting my words, pulling back examples of what she had sacrificed throughout her life for me, she’s the expert at all those tricks. Me, I’m usually cowed by her in the end. So I’ve long since given up arguing with her. No point, no point to it at all.