Dear Friends,
It seems to me, people who look at life myopically, think life should be explored to its fullest, feeling every feeling and experiencing every experience, other than having children and a family. While people who look at life more holistically, see the deeper value in a family, children and the fulfillment that they bring. How do I know this? I used to visit a nursing home every Thursday with my dog Fifi. She would cause a hubbub… and there is nothing someone trapped in boredom waiting to die likes any better, than chaos. Fifi was chaos incarnate. Talking, laughing and listening to their stories was an eye opening experience. I would strongly suggest everyone do it for at least a year. The one thing that stands out is, those there with families were so much happier, more fulfilled and less anxious than those without.
I met people who had paddled the local river, farmed, were war heroes and had lived since WWI. I understood famous people had been there as well as infamous ones. In the end, we all die, with family, alone or with strangers. One thing all their stories told me is, the most mundane life has metaphysical importance. I met a nanny once. She was down on herself for “only” being a nanny. I asked her what the job of the President was? She didn’t know. I offered, his job is to keep the world safe for our children to grow up into. She agreed that was a valid definition. So I went on, and YOUR job is to care for the very children he is keeping the world safe for. So, by a rational measure, your job is more important than the President’s. The lovely woman had to find something else to lament.
When we abandon our primary purpose we become dislodged from the epi-schema. The whole reason for Pandas is to make more pandas. There need not be any other reason for their existence. Would you exterminate pandas because they are of no use? The same is true of cats, emus and human beings. We alone, however, have the ability to transmit knowledge generation to generation, the most important being wisdom. In the transmission of knowledge and wisdom, we have a duty to continue, so that all that as been done, known and experienced does not vanish. To do that there needs to be people, to learn it, live it and transmit it on. Humanity could last until the sun extinguishes life on Earth, else then we flee, bringing Earth’s life with us on a sort of Noah’s arc. Perhaps saving pandas in the process.
I knew a woman who was a world traveler. She had seen it all. The pyramids, Europe, Central America. Heck, she even got stung by a scorpion on one of her journeys. The woman had everything, but a family, and she was miserable for it. No amount of travel, experience or food could fill the void. When you look around, really look at people, most of them are merely ticking off the time. Filling a void with luxury, distraction and hedonistic pleasure. Then, as the Pink Floyd song goes, “one day you find, ten years has got behind you…” in one way we are happy, like a turd in a tank, even as we are horrified by where we are. Those raising children don’t have time to worry about foolishness. Once they have the time, their lives are filled with the blessing of grandchildren, dissolving the cataract of worldliness.
Our culture is utterly corrosive of a good life today. Instead of lionizing families, motherhood and fatherhood, it denigrates them. Manipulating teens into giving up their greatest gift, and can give mankind, to gather pixy dust instead. No wonder those who have reaped pixy dust, discover it is like a rainbow, pretty and ethereal, and are angry. I don’t blame them. They should be, at their manipulators, not at others who could escape their sorry fate. So, the greatest blessing you can pray for a child, is for them to be a matriarch or patriarch of a large, healthy, happy, prosperous family, die surrounded by their great great grandchildren… and go to heaven when they die. That is a right and proper prayer to say for our children… and a damned sight better than manipulating them into self harm.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
