It's not in the choice, it's in the consciousness.

Last night, something occurred to me, and I posed this question, "Thak, do you ever think life would be easier in some ways if we were mainstream parents?" He thought about it for a minute, and said, "Yes, but then we'd be doing it wrong." God, I love him.

We got to talking about it, and I was reminded of a conversation I had earlier that day with a longtime friend of ours, and fellow alternative parent. He said that he's glad that Thak and I raise awareness of the things we do which are currently considered to be alternative, because it makes people reflect on why they make the choices they make. I thought that was interesting, and it lead me to the crux of the issue I've been grappling with for the past year or so.

A lot of people say it's wrong to not want to hang out with people whose parenting practices and philosophy differs drastically from your own. I don't think it is. The big things on my mind right now consist of a certain cloth diapering issue, doing more research on home birth, and doing a lot of research on breastfeeding so that I can get over my mental block with it and successfully exclusively breastfeed my next baby. I'm pretty sure the forumla-from-birth, disposable diapering, hospital birthing masses would not understand anything that I'm dealing with at this point. I often hear from people like that, that I think too much.

THAT, my friends, is the crux of the issue. No, I don't think too much. There is no such thing as thinking too much. I've always kind of lived in my head, and I like it here. The issue is that the mainstream parents think too little. There is no consciousness to their choices. Over the past year, I thought maybe I could respect their choices a bit more if I understood their reasoning for them, so I've asked a lot of them, openly and honestly (NOT condescendingly) why they do what they do. The answers didn't make me think better of anybody. In fact, they made me think even worse of them. Their reasoning came down to myths, hearsay, and not questioning anything. They more or less followed what they thought was "normal", never once questioning whether "normal" was even right.

This lead me to the conclusion that it's not the choices someone makes which dictate whether I can respect them or not. It's the consciousness behind those choices. It seems to me that the mainstream ones are walking blindly. That's why I can't deal with that. It's not because I only like people who do things my way. It's because I only like people who think. I've yet to find a parent who could give me a solid (read: scientific, mathematical, or statistical) reason for the things they do which are mainstream, yet proven to be subpar or even harmful.

It's not the choice. It's the consciousness. In Thak's words, yeah, life would be easier if we were mainstream, but then we'd be doing it wrong.

We are full of consciousness, and empty of regret.