Future offspring
Momentary pointers for landing
I’d been driving a motorbike through Europe, climbing mountains into Switzerland, winding up narrow roads overlooking valleys, when I had a thought that spurred a conversation between myself and future offspring.
The view was celestial, new to me, regal. A curve at the peak, outstretched landscape below, a kingdom for his people.
I was talking about how incredible the experience of life could be. I was telling future offspring, whom I was becoming increasingly aware of the dwindling possibility of his or her arrival, — dwindling due to the choices and circumstances of my life, — choices including this ride, on motorbike, into mountain, looking out over this view, instead of staying in NY to land another job or another relationship, —telling future offspring, if he or she should choose to arrive, how incredible life could be.
It’s gonna be a ton of work, I said. If you really want it. First, you do realize, you’re going to have to help us get you here.
Like every other eight year-old boy, I remember sitting angrily in my room thinking, I hadn’t chosen to be born, hadn’t chosen to be born into this family, all these older siblings telling me what to do. Suddenly I’d realized, what if I had chosen to be born. What if I had chosen, of all the universes, this opportunity.
I said to offspring, it’s gonna have to be up to you, because, to be honest, we aren’t, can’t you see, trying. Look, I’m up here on a mountain. So, first, you’ll have to find her, then help me find her, then help us love each other.
Each of those, singularly, are enormous tasks. But in addition, you realize then, you’ll have to help us want children. I mean, we’ll do it, for sure, okay, if you want it all that badly. I mean, no problem, we can help you get to your destination. It’s up to you though, and totally worth it, this earth, living. But you’ll have to do all the work, we’re currently, as you can see, preoccupied and unwilling.
I mean, to be honest it is utterly worth it, the most volatile and contradictory of experiences — without a doubt, worth it. If you really want to be born that is, I’d say, you best get started. It ain’t easy, true, but we’ll give you a solid spot to stand on. Just letting you know, mostly on you though.
And for a moment it felt as if we were in some sort of disagreement. As if I had to convince offspring that indeed life with all its losses and hardships were like nothing else imagined. That it’d be worth future offspring trying, even if we hadn’t done the work ourselves yet.
That this thoroughly convoluted and complex experience, were, eventually leading, all things considered, to indiscriminate amounts of otherwise, seemingly, more often than not, unobtainable joys.
At once, as if in a sudden frame of clarity, something utterly inescapable in beauty about the entirety of this experience, the ultimate experiment. Half in what I likely would have wished to share with future offspring, all-in-all, and half in sudden peaceful acceptance of my own landing.
I mean, it’s incredible, I said, as I finally drove off around the bend. You absolutely gotta see this. And I didn’t mean the view, but the entirety of having made it up these hills, to this point in the story. You should give it a try, I said, life, it’s wild. I mean check this out. Yeah it’s mostly brutal for the first 30, and if you’re lucky you’ll get some alternatingly random really nice spots. And that’s just the thing, life, it’s a wild unscripted trip. I mean, look at where I am, I said. Can you believe it. I’m all the way up here. After all that crap I dealt with at work, and after all that never wanting another relationship. Can you feel this, that limitless, infinite, power of existence? As if hovering above all the inescapable cruelty of life, as if being one with the contradiction of being human, for a glimpse, momentarily, simply being okay with it all.
Take a look at this, I said. What an unusual thing to experience. And this time I did mean the view, and the place I was in, entirely internal and each our own – recorded. All the highs and lows, included.
You won’t believe it, I said. Life on Earth, there’s nothing like it. You should probably give it a try, if you’d like, you know, just letting you know it’s entirely up to you. I’ll be here though to help you get the most of it.
We petered out after that. I got back to climbing, my offspring back to waiting. I hadn’t known if I’d won, if we were now in agreement, but the road kept coming, and the nice spot, momentarily, was a window we’d both sat in.
