will your future be a productive one?

[woaini]

No matter what we do or how much we do, we are gonna die.
Be grateful for every living minute

 

[SilverRRCloud]

SO , I was thinking recently ... about the gay life, and what does it cost me to be gay...


I figured , I was always taught a certain way of things as I was growing up,

you go to school
you get a job
you get a girl
you marry the girl
you have couple of kids
live to see your grandkids
die. the end.

basically if your gay... you stop at "getting a job" , there are no ... marrying someone and getting kids etc etc...

Some might say, well you could marry a guy and adopt kids or whatever.

but it's really not the same thing... and it's really rare anyways...

anyways , I don't want people attacking me in this thread telling me that a gay life is the same as a straight life, I'm just saying that in the straight life, it's kinda like a natural way of living while in the gay life, it's like imitating the straight life..

how can a gay person be productive in his future and do something as important as getting married, having a kid, without marrying a man and adopting a kid?

They lied to you.

There is so much more to human experience than just getting married, raising childred and expecting to die a happy granddad...

Most people can and do the aforementioned. Many others take the bull by the horn and do whatever they want to do on their own terms.

Gay or str8 makes no difference here.

SC

 

[star-warrior]

Have you considered getting a partner and then pets?

 

[kevbo]

I want to get married and have kids

but I still need to work on Step 1...

 

[S60Turbo]

Be true to yourself.
Be kind to others.
Persue whatever your heart desires.

I guess I was lucky. My mother that raised me never really said any of these things. She just wants us to be happy.

 

[-live-]

Hopefully if i'm just happy that will do it for me. Not really thinking it needs to be productive.

 

[gsdx]

My future is already here. . . and it sucks.

 

[Swellegant]

you go to school
you get a job
you get a girl
you marry the girl
you have couple of kids
live to see your grandkids
die. the end.

If that's all straight people get to look forward to, I'm surprised the suicide rate isn't higher. How ineffably dreary! Where in there is an individual identity? Where in there is an individual contribution to humanity? Where in there is room to grow and learn as a human being?

Having children is all well and good, it's not like that stops you from being an individual (though it should), but it's not the be-all end-all of human experience. It's something that a lot of people do, and a lot of people don't.

The idea that you're going to grow up and get married and have children is certainly inculcated into us at a very young age; I know there was a time that I thought my life was going to be like that. But then I grew up. Nobody's life is that simple, not straights', not gays', nobody's. The education has to be worked for, the job has to be found and kept, the girl has to be met and courted and caved-in-to, the kids have to be brought up properly and then they have to agree to have the grandchildren (and often they won't... maybe they'll be gay, too)... there are a zillion little things that can go wrong with that simplistic and horribly trite scenario you were taught. Why waste your life, gay or straight, trying to make it happen? Especially if it's not what you want but rather what someone else wants for you?

It doesn't cost you anything to be gay, and I strongly recommend you stop looking at it that way. It's simply a different hands of cards you get dealt, a different set of birthrights, a different set of inescapable traits. Just accept that and move forward with creating a life that makes you happy rather than conforms to somebody else's idea of happiness.

 

[metta]

My business is makeing a postitive influence on this world.

I'm a vegetarian.

I'm involved in planning and implementing community events, including being on the board of the social committee.

I try to keep the community I live in informed with an email list and a community web site.

I'm in charge of my block for the neighborhood watch program.

I'm also on the board of a very small non-profit performing arts center.

I make regular contributions to charities and other non-profits that are important to me.

I vote on a regular basis, including yesterday.

I take care of my home and garden.

I workout on a regular basis.

I try not to purchase products from companies or stores that I find deeply offensive like WalMart and Exxon/Mobil.

I try to be as environmentally responsible as possible while still maintaining a high quality of life. (constantly finding that healthy balance that will work for me)

 

[winterknight]

I hope so. My present isn't exactly that productive, by any meaning of the word.

Of course, it's all my own silly fault. But that doesn't make things any easier...

 

[woaini]

My future is already here. . . and it sucks.

I don't know how I should feel about what you said~

 

[Pushover]

In my future, I foresee being alone in a large, old house with a dozen cats and sitting in a huge chair by the fireplace eating cold broth. Then some cute boytoy will carry me away to the Bahamas...

 

[Jersey Domino]

Well My future probably won't be much productive(being as I don't really care about being productive)But It'll be a nice one I think.

 

[dkonfrost]

just because you don't follow the prescribed get married-have kids thing doesn't make your life any less productive.

i have no intention of having children or grandkids, but i would like a husband someday.

i'm also in nursing school, and hoping to work up to ER nurse and eventually NP, and maybe become a clinical instructor. IMHO, that's far more productive than having spawn.

Point is: YOU get to choose how productive your life is. even if it doesn't involve children or any of that traditional stuff

 

[G-Lexington]

Too bad - I'm attacking you anyway.

>>>Some might say, well you could marry a guy and adopt kids or whatever. but it's really not the same thing...

Bullshit. It's precisely the same thing. If the most important thing to you is raising children, then it doesn't matter if they were formed out of your DNA or not - if you're raising them, they're YOURS. One of my best friends (straight) adopted two children, he and his wife are raising them, and nobody gives them grief about "Well, it's not really the same". Because it IS really the same. And it's the same if it's two guys, two women, or just one person doing it.

And why are you equating "raising children" with "being productive"? Why? All that's been done is more human beings have been created...so that they can...what? Create more human beings, apparently. So you made a little human. Big whoop - human beings, along with every other species on Earth, have been doing that since time immemorial.

I'm not discounting parenthood here. But it's not the creation of the person that means anything. It's what you do with that person for the next eighteen years or so that counts. It's how good a parent you are. It's how good the children turn out.

And for many people (including this one), parenthood holds no interest. That doesn't make us unproductive. It just means we make our mark in other ways. I try to make people's lives better, both in work, in volunteering, and in everyday life. And that's friggin' worthwhile if you ask me.

The cost of being gay - for me - has been pretty damn small. I have to deal with petty things like Playboy magazine on the bedside table when I checked into a hotel room last week ("That's what guys like, right?"). It means having to explain to strangers that I'm "partnered", and hoping they won't wig out on me. (They never have. Yet.) It means having a few assumptions tossed my way. ("You're good with fashion, right?") BFD. These "costs" are absolutely infitesimal compared to the benefits. I don't bemoan the fact that I wasn't born female or Asian or shorter or richer more than very fleetingly, and I sure as hell don't bemoan the fact that I wasn't born straight. I am who I am - what am I gonna do with it?

Lex

 

[Berbenli]

There is way too much pressure by my parents on me to be the child of theirs that "succeeds". "Get married! Give me grandchildren! Earns tons of money! Blah blah blah!" I wish they would spend more time devoting themselves to helping and caring for the entire family instead of hassling me all the time over the most stupid shit and talking down about their other children as if they have somehow failed at parenting because my siblings didn't become what they hoped for. Nothing is EVER good enough.

 

[Boogerqueesha]

Believing that marriage and kids are a necessary part of production, is a societal value that you, as an individual, do not need to share.

Another societal value is the contempt of homosexuality. Wanna share that one, too?

Live by your own definitions (including the definition of 'productive'). If you adopt someone else's definition of productive, you will doom yourself to imitating the life of that person- someone that you aren't.

 

[Jory]

What will be will be

 

[Jory]

pretty song

Good movie too The Man who knew too much 1955 Staring Jimmy Steward and Doris Day Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

 

[Sunshine]

Ooh, when I was reading all the posts here I REALLY wanted some french fries....so I guess my future will have french fries in it....I hope.