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You know how kids just can’t do anything wrong in their parents’ eyes?

While my dad was never very successful, he grew up as a typical Aussie male.. He bought a few Holdens, got a trade, bought a boat, got married then divorced, then met my mother and sold the boat and had a family. He’d always told me how the choices that he made in life were never good enough for his dad and how he never had any support from him. On mum’s side, her mum was sick and her dad was pretty much a no show after her early teens, so she had to fend for herself from a young age with little support once again. Her dad has always given her a hard time about the choices that she has made in life too.

This seems quite common talking to a lot of  mates’ parents. Their parents would always be disappointed by them – things like what career they chose, that they didn’t buy a house early enough, got married too late and so on.

Turn it around though, and things appear to be completely different now. A considerable portion of my friends since leaving school have either travelled, and blown their cash in sacrifice of life experience, or bummed around at uni and not really achieved much, and with the full support of their parents! It’s like the Baby Boomers have learned that the way that they did it was wrong. They are almost giving us approval, or consent to go out there and just live – not necessarily find a safe job or start a family – just enjoy life.

Maybe it’s the way that we portray our lives to our parents – I know that my parents are very proud of the way that my fiancee and I are living our lives. Working now – going overseas next year. My dad is extremely proud of the way that I can go out drinking with the boys without my fiancee, and she trusts me, and vice-versa.

All things considered, the Baby Boomers seem to have faith in their kids – the Gen Y’s, despite some pretty poor decisions on our behalf from time to time.

Maybe they are just learning that there is in fact more than one way to live your life? Or have they just had such a safe life by taking their parents’ advice and getting a safe job, buying a house early and starting a family young, that they are happy to see their kids out there experiencing new things and taking some risks? Risks that they never took and now regret it?

I wrote in my first blog entry that I’m a hypocrite. It’s the easiest way of saying what I’m about to say.

I have a heap of ideals in life, but almost never meet any of them. For instance, ideally I would be a raw vegan. It is my belief that the healthiest diet to have is when eating raw plant based food. With that said, I eat way too much processed food, and still eat a lot of meat (probably once every two days). Ideally I wouldn’t drink either, would be fit enough to race mountain biking in an elite category, would spend my days outside rather than watching TV, never drive to work, and not even think about drinking coffee.

While some people call me soft for not acting on my ideals, I have learned that I tend to think about all of the options, and make my decisions slowly before actually acting on them. Right now I am in the “evaluation stage” I suppose you could say. My opinions and decisions have been made, I am just waiting to act on them.

Part of the reason why I am slow to act on these decisions is because of where we are at in life. A lot of the decisions that I want to make will impact on my fiancee’s life, and while she is happy with how it will impact her, I’m not ready to put her through it.

Next year we are heading overseas. No rules, just freedom. I don’t want to be in Italy and refuse eating a home cooked dish because it has meat in it, or not drink some grappa because it’s against my decision to stay away from alcohol. We will be in Europe, then North America – how can we not do as the locals do?! How could we not have a ultra king size burger with a two litre cup of Coke in the fattest country in the world?

Freedom is key to my short term life, and I’m fine with that. So for the next two years, take what I say with a pinch of salt. I will form my opinions like I normally do, but chances are I’m not actually going to act on them for at least another year or two.

So now that I have explained my situation, what do you think? Am I a hypocrite?