Memories of me lost, but for her to find

A colleague today was telling me about a bet they have with their partner about their child, will he walk or talk first. The reason is that one of the parents walked before talking, the other talked before walking so the bet is based on who the child will take after. Of course, it isn't very scientific. It got me thinking though, I don't know the answer to that question and in fact, I don't know the answer to most of my childhood questions concerning my development because the holder of that information was my mother, and she passed away a long time ago.

This is actually a big part of the reason that keep a diary for my daughter on Steem because f something happens to me or her mother, there is going to be a massive hole in the information she has of herself and even though it is largely irrelevant for life itself, it does bring a richness to experience. I don't know what my first word was, I don't know when I took my first steps, I don't know whether I slept well as a baby or if I was courageous or shy around strangers. I really don't know anything that isn't part of my own experiential memory.

While it doesn't effect me so much that I can't operate as a human, it also means that I can't share stories with my wife and daughter an make those fun little comparisons about similarities and differences. While I don't mind too much about my ancestors history like my brother @galenkp does, I am curious about what I might have been like as a baby or toddler and even though I have older brothers, they aren't old enough to really understand the significance of these events to store them in their own memories.

Why isn't there a Steem blockchain BabyBook app? A place that made it easy to store pertinent information, link pictures, add stories, video clips and the like on chain so that one day no matter what happens, there is a record there of something.

The blog I write for my daughter contains little parts of her life and her life with my wife and I as her parents too and I hope that one day she will be able to read through there and find little bits of personalized treasure she can carry with her. It also has the added benefit of earning a little bit of Steem and based on my belief of the Steem blockchain, when she turns 18 she is going to get the keys to her account as a gift from me to her, one that will have been by that stage, seventeen years in the making. Seventeen years is a long time away of course but, imagine the value of Steem if it does make it. Hopefully it will be a significant boost to her start in life, something I myself didn't get.

While I would never expect anything from my parents anyway, I also am quite certain that I could have turned a small amount into something significant if given the opportunity. Instead, my life was one born into scarcity, not just economic hardship and constant talk and experience of the lack of means, but informational scarcity where a lot of discussions that could and likely should have been had never took place.

Informational scarcity is worse in many ways than economic and while it is impossible to get everything across one might want to children, technology these days means that they should never be lacking access to knowledge around and about them. However, while people provide a constant stream of information to their children in various ways, how many actually take the time to think through the information they provide their children about themselves? Who knows, perhaps it would help them understand themselves better and get curious about what they are actually capable of doing, rather than what they are capable of consuming.

Who knows if there is a difference in children based on whether they know their childhood stories or not but, considering that seemingly irrelevant details can grow into passions and careers, I'd say that there is a chance that those who have a better understanding of their strengths from a young age, might lean more toward supporting themselves in those areas too.

Well, at least I hope that what I write for my daughter will give her a few laughs one day and maybe even those that have a read of them in the here and now get a better understanding of various aspects of my life too and perhaps in so doing, of your own. We are all much more complex than a post, blog or video flattens us down to but sometimes we forget how human we all are. Well, 50% of us on Steem... maybe 30%.

Goodnight, I am absolutely smashed from the last few weeks and there is still two 12 hour days to go before the weekend work begins :)

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]