2021 feels like the year that adulthood has finally, unmistakably and irreversibly arrived.
We are having a baby. The biggest deal of all of 2021. Besides the love, tenderness and nerves, it confers a sense of the finiteness of time. Life is undoubtedly moving on to a new stage, and I am bound to acknowledge that there can be but a finite number of these that one gets to live through.
The other aspect of finiteness is that some things start to feel that they really matter. Soon I will be responsible for the happiness of another, small human being. The modus operandi that comes most natural to me - taking random strides and seeing where things land - no longer appears so viable as a general strategy. He will get to grow up only once, and I will get to be his father only once. As parents I wish we guide not teach, and I wish he will experience this world as an open adventure that he explores and cocreates - first with us, and later on his own - so it’s not as if spontaneity will be out of the window. It is absolutely essential. Still, from now on my actions will have consequences that someone other than myself will have no choice but bear for a long time, maybe a lifetime. To exercise spontaneity not with abandon but with weight on one’s shoulders - perhaps that’s what adulthood demands. At the same time responsibility has started to feel hearty, or at least not merely burdensome - perhaps that’s what adulthood begets.
Part of the responsibility I feel, consciously or subconsciously related to the child, is to be able to tell good and evil - to myself, and to him. What constitutes a good life? Since life is finite and at least to some degree serious, not having an answer or not caring to have an answer doesn’t pass for an answer. And since possessing but reining in the capacity for evil is a necessary ingredient for doing good, there can’t be a trivial or “natural” answer to this question either. One must discern and discriminate. Eventually he will have to figure this all out for himself, and will probably be drawn instinctively towards the opposite of what his father believes in as a reading of the great novels would suggest. Nonetheless, at least in the early years, his most credulous years, I suppose what I model and articulate will leave some mark.
I have traveled far from my native place, both geographically and intellectually, driven by the animating spirits of boundless conviction of the human potential and disregard for convention or inertia. There isn’t an obvious tradition that he can simply grandfather into. Yet one needs a well of strength that one can draw upon in moments of need that is larger than oneself, and more inexhaustible than what one’s rational mind can produce. I suppose I get by with some admixture of a secure attachment from childhood, certain formative experiences, a self-imposed training regimen, and some great books. Whatever I get by with, it is not obvious how it can be reproduced for him - in fact it is not obvious whether it will work for him.
I’m searching for a root, for myself and now also for him - which to a large extent is what this blog is about. And if we can’t find a root, we are going to cultivate a root.
Hope you and baby are doing well! Raising a child is indeed one of the most difficult things for smart and logical people to do -- since children often defy all logic. But it sounds like you'll give him a great start and at least some common sense. Cheers!