On Procreation
I am extremely grateful to be surrounded by thinkers who share their convictions with cordial discourse. It is so grand that it feels so natural to jump from peer to peer and hear thoughts on my thoughts. Our student body is so entrenched in this behavior that my question starts to be innocently pondered and suddenly, it’s two in the morning. Huge realms of discussion are repeatedly placed on the backburner for fear of elapsing all eternity while discussing it. Maturity of disputation allows entertainment of ideas wildly foreign to oneself, and that’s where the magic happens.
In speaking with a friend of mine, I found that one of my deepest convictions, a core value that I hold, is not shared by him. What this does is it allows me to be naked in my assessment of this value, discuss it, and either discount or reaffirm it. After our discussion my value was strongly reaffirmed. This is my exhalation of it, newly vitalized, in the hopes that he, and all without affinity to it, can feel this conviction and act upon it.
I strongly believe that one of the principal purposes of my existence is to have children. I try to orient myself towards making the world a better place as much as possible. Little is more effective towards this end than placing in it people with whom I share my delicately conceptualized values. We all frenzy to be remembered in ultimately insignificant ways and forget that we can literally create an exponentially growing chain of human beings, a swarm of thinkers and good.
I am second-to-oldest of seven children and have not a scab of an illusion that raising children is easy. If you assess the worth of things based on their ease you miss out on being human. In the beginning, my parents had neither the money nor the time to have children. They still did: if they could create people, they could create time. Now, because of their efforts and omnibenevolence, there are six people in this world whom I love unconditionally and trust with all that is me. Six people who for me are the living, breathing, gentle, thoughtful, caring, hard-earned eponyms of procreation done right.
People find it amusing, but for years I’ve kept a running list of things that I want to implement when I’m a parent. They come from anywhere they can be found, and I record them with excitement and passion: the house will be filled with quotes and thoughts and stories; their bedrooms will be under a ceiling of hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars; the library will be a magical place of curiosity; and on and on and on. My excitement helps drive me towards my ideal self, the self which I dream to share with my children.
In entertaining the contrary you are considering relinquishing your most blatant of superpowers. You don’t even have to mix ingredients, put parts together, exert much effort at all. You are equipped with the you-seed that exists nowhere else. With your wife and her her-seed you come together into a unique person that you get to watch come of age in this world. With this person you get to share what it means to be human, what it means to give and to love, to overcome pain and fight for what you believe in, to value things because of their worth and not because of their ease. There is no one with a cleaner slate on which you get to share the ways of the world than your child. Your experience with and love of life can greater benefit no one than your kin. There is no reason for restraint; share what you are.
I urge you to internalize the implications of your fecundity. There is little else as worthwhile as creating good in this world; there is little else creative as procreation, little else good as bringing good humans to this earth. To my friend, I hope I have allowed you to reassess this value with a childlike innocence, and that I’ve planted the seed towards your planting your seeds.
