There must be something you haven't told the world yet.
Perhaps you have a secret dream or a secret fear. Maybe you think a deep thought that no one would expect of you. It may even be time to reveal exactly who pulled that prank several years ago. What if it's a guilty pleasure you wouldn't normally have admitted?
assignment 22
People tell me that I'm good with kids. For example, my 19 month old nephew apparently can't stop talking about me. I see him a couple of times a week and we really like to play.
Before that, though, I've made friends with children easily. One year during college I worked in an afterschool program with elementary school kids. I was the fun teacher. We'd go outside to play or work on craft projects indoors or read books and play games.
I even do well with children outside of work settings. I'm the oldest of seven nephews by most of a decade. Being right in the middle of the adults and the children was odd, but I learned how to deal with them. They're a lot like smaller adults. They have their own motivations and ideas. They have their own discernable personalities. They're more honest and worse liars, usually, and they often cause less damage when they're upset. They're challenging, sure, and it's a great joy to hand a baby back to its parents when it comes time to change a diaper, but kids are alright. I don't mind them at all.
I don't want to have my own though. Part of that is practical and part of it is philosophical. I've never told anyone the philosophical part because it terrifies me so much.
Practically, I watched most of my friends from college marry and start having children at ages 20, 21, 22, and 23. Only in the past year and a half have I thought myself ready even to consider marriage (though of course, I'll need the right girl first). Knowing how much work it is to take care of myself, how can I consider taking care of a child? I don't even know how much work it is to take care of a marriage! How do parents resign themselves to interrupted sleep, a constant vigil of toddler dangers, medical mishaps, naptimes, messes, shopping for new clothes, and driving minivans?
The amount of new things to learn and the rate at which you have to acclimate amazes me. I realize that I didn't come with an instruction manual and my parents had to learn as they went along, but my brother and I turned out decently anyway. How do you change life as you know it so dramatically, though?
Yet people do. Parents tell me that there are joys unimaginable. I can believe that. Some people have wanted to have children ever since they knew it was possible. I can believe that too. Even without all of the uncertainty, even if I did want to have children, the practical considerations would still frighten me. They don't destroy the idea though.
Philosophically, things are much, much worse.
Is there anything more innocent than a child? When you hold a baby for the first time, do you feel the miracle of life? Can you see the great potential in your arms? The child could do great things or leave a great mark of beauty on the world or even live an otherwise normal life made beautiful by our shared humanity.
Consider the state of the world, though.
On one side, everything will be new to this child. Imagine his first spoonful of ice cream — even plain vanilla, with its icy smooth sweetness, the aroma and taste exploding on his tongue. That's just the tip of life. What about running, watching a sunset, holding a pretty girl's hand, seeing something he built take shape, and becoming self-reliant? There are so many joys for him to experience.
On the other side, remember that there is also pain and sorrow. He'll experience betrayal. He'll realize his own mortality. He'll try and fail. He'll see that there is injustice in the world. He'll know the pain of lost love and fear and his own imperfection.
Given the choice, would he choose to live, anticipating all of the possible joys, knowing that sorrows come along? Yet I wouldn't be able to give him that choice. I couldn't.
No one asks to be born. No one explained that for the joy of subcreation, of putting my thoughts into words for the world to read, I'd suffer the fear of having those words rejected, trivialized, or, worse, never read. No one promised that if I endured the fear of potential rejection and talked to that sweet, beautiful girl, we'd eventually share our lives. (I wish someone would.)
Would I have chosen to live if I knew that the bittersweet taste is beautiful? Would I have chosen to exist in this world if I thought I could find joy and contentment in spite of the suffering all around me? What if I knew that I had to suffer?
I don't know. How can I bring a life into the world without offering him or her that decision though? It's profoundly unfair that we find ourselves so small in such a big big world that seems as if it doesn't care about us. Would my love as a parent, an imperfect man desperately hoping to learn as I make mistakes, be sufficient to shield my children?
What of the soul? What if death is all there is? What if it's not? How do I offer that choice to a child without knowing of it myself? Do I say "Be careful the person you are, lest you stay that way in the next world"? Do I warn against a cold sleep? Eternal joy? Unconscious peril?
Sometimes I lie in bed, unsleeping, until these questions steal into my head and I sit upright, heart pounding, thinking of anything — nothing! — else until it disappears. Even writing about the subject now makes my bones ache.
I don't want to have children because I'm afraid of what life really is. How can I take part in creating a new life if I can't look that child in the eyes and know that he or she would have chosen life, whatever it may be? I admire people who can, but I may never see the world that way.