Frantisek Kupka, "The Beginning of Life"
Who has been blessed with those mysterious moments in which an infant for the first time toddles forward on her feet, unaided by any guiding hand or low object, in deep concentration upon the next step? In these moments especially do we not empathize most readily with the parents of this beautiful creature, and wish ourselves progenitors and recipients of this most wondrous gift that can only be divine? Love surges in our hearts, mysterious love without the need for rationale, mysterious love that gives birth to hope, hope that asserts the goodness of this new and curious life.
Some say that a pregnant mother is irradiated with the burgeoning life within her, that her eyes are alight with the joy of expectation. We, as witnesses of this joy, must wonder how there may be any question as to the benefit of having children, of raising a healthy and numerous family. The more persons, we would say, the better. The greater number of human beings in society, the greater chance that society may grow to be great, not only in size but in quality. Saying “yes” to the possibility of children is the ultimate social act, the ultimate affirmation of the human community, and the ultimate renunciation of selfish interests. Yes, one should have children, if only because one must have children if history is to continue. We know by the very fact of mortality that the story we live is not our own. We prepare, well or poorly as the case may be, for those who come after.
The object, then, is to prepare well, and to prepare well first of all requires the existence of the reason for which we prepare: children themselves. As Pope John Paul II has said, “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” If we are to “plan for the future,” as we moderns so proudly declaim, we must not postpone or neglect the begetting of the stewards of the future. What use is a future without people? We are always speaking of the “avant-garde” in art or technology or politics as a state to be envied, and yet this obsession becomes insane when we are equally obsessed with maintaining an isolation and a lack of responsibility that contradicts this very attraction for newness by claiming it only for our moribund selves. Indeed, on a very rational level, whether or not we “like” children, humanity is nothing without reproduction. Children are the very proof that only love is eternal and we ourselves are ash.
The French spirit of this age, the spirit of ethnic extinction, is one that upraises the image of the unbound self, free and unfettered by worldly ties or the demands of relationships. The mobility to do as one pleases is prized above all else. “This existence, this here and now,” the modern Frenchman might say, “is the great thing, the only occupation worth intellectual or spiritual involvement.” And yet, by agreeing with the Frenchman, we would most ardently disagree. The idolization of the independent self above all else is the same as the hatred of the self above all else, for the self is nothingness without relationship to others, divine or human. The self asserts nothing if it does not assert the perfection of itself, which lies – unexpectedly to some – in the engendering and nurturing of new life like oneself, an infinite affirmation of self-worth. Imagine the great pain and emptiness felt by Hannah as she wept and prayed in the temple, mourned her childlessness in abject loneliness in the darkened tent, swept her garments about her to cover the shame of being known, facelessness being better than barrenness. How she wept and prayed, a woman beginning to wrinkle with age – but what did the purity of desire gain her, all her attentions devoted in ecstasy toward a possible and improbable new life to give hers meaning: reward. Reward in another heartbeat to join her own in the acclamation, the drumbeat and song of life's praise.
We take the ability to procreate for granted, as if this seemingly ubiquitous biological ability we must necessarily also possess. Would it not be a terrible shame if those who now artificially postpone the possibility of children until they have reached what they deem as the appropriate time find themselves, when that time arrives, to be incapable of the greatest blessing afforded us in our briefness upon this earth? Is this awesome blessing, then, not to be pursued with passion and dear effort? Are we not to bend all our will upon the attainment of this treasure that ratifies the very proposition that life is worth living? Are we not to be exceedingly grateful if we are able in the requirements of circumstance to conceive and bear a child? Indeed, we must be and we must do, for as we believe there is a soul, children are a gift from the Divine, and therefore sacred from their conception, and what is sacred must be sought without ceasing.
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