To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

The very idea is foreign to what most of us learn as kids. When I was a kid, it seemed as if work and fun were opposites by definition. Life had two states: some of the time adults were making you do things, and that was called work; the rest of the time you could do what you wanted, and that was called playing. Occasionally the things adults made you do were fun, just as, occasionally, playing wasn't—for example, if you fell and hurt yourself. But except for these few anomalous cases, work was pretty much defined as not-fun.

And it did not seem to be an accident. School, it was implied, was tedious because it was preparation for grownup work.

The world then was divided into two groups, grownups and kids. Grownups, like some kind of cursed race, had to work. Kids didn't, but they did have to go to school, which was a dilute version of work meant to prepare us for the real thing. Much as we disliked school, the grownups all agreed that grownup work was worse, and that we had it easy.

Teachers in particular all seemed to believe implicitly that work was not fun. Which is not surprising: work wasn't fun for most of them. Why did we have to memorize state capitals instead of playing football? For the same reason they had to watch over a bunch of kids instead of lying on a field. You couldn't just do what you wanted.

I'm not saying we should let little kids do whatever they want. They may have to be made to work on certain things. But if we make kids work on dull stuff, it might be wise to tell them that tediousness is not the defining quality of work, and indeed that the reason they have to work on dull stuff now is so they can work on more interesting stuff later. [1]

Once, when I was about 9 or 10, my father told me I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up, so long as I enjoyed it. I remember that precisely because it seemed so anomalous. It was like being told to use dry water. Whatever I thought he meant, I didn't think he meant work could literally be fun—fun like playing. It took me years to grasp that.

When does life really begin? Is it when the first fluttering beats of the primitive heart of a fetus start, or when the child is pushed from the womb into the world? Does it all actually start at the moment of conception when the egg and sperm meet and mix their genetic code together to create a new being. Who can say really. No one knows because no one is sure of when life truely begins.

There are many out there who say an unborn child isn't really a person, or even alive because it can not sustain it's own life. If this were true, then no one is a real person until they are living on their own away from their parents. When you stop and really think about this, without listening to the arguments about when life starts or if something is considered alive until a certain time, you would suprised at what you may find.

When the primitive heart of a tiny fetus starts to beat for the first time, it is then that it starts to actually survive on its own, apart from its mother. Though at this time, most mothers-to-be don't know they are mothers yet, they begin to change their attitude to a more gentle caring way and doing what they can to protect the tiny life inside them in many different ways. Its that life growing inside them that started those mothering instincts. Its those instincts that protect it from harm until it is able to survive outside the womb and until it can live apart from its mother later in life. Even beyond that point, any mother will protect her young from everything she can.

I'm not a scientist, a theologist, or even a doctor. I am just an average woman with a child of her own. From the moment I felt those first flutterings of life within me and heard my child's beating heart for the first time, all thanks to modern technology, I have thought about when life truely began. No matter what, from the very beginning when the egg and sperm meet, it is a living breathing human being. Sometimes, the life can not go beyond a few weeks inside the mother, but its still alive, until it can not go any longer. There are times, when that life has to be ended, in such cases, it is still sad, but if the mother is to live, then it has to be done. There are other times, when frankly, it is best because there are other problems such as a tumor which is eating away at the child little by little. It doesn't change the fact the child had to die, but at least, it had a small chance and brought just a little happiness into the mother's life.

So, when does life really begin? I don't know, but when ever it does, its all well worth keeping it going, for the rewards are more than what anyone truely deserves.