The Line

Editor's note: I wrote this on maybe Tuesday? and I cannot be bothered today do any actual editing or to see if my point or metaphor was valid or if I indeed have a point or use a metaphor. So if it's brilliant, that's awesome and I'm going to give my past self a high-five but if it's a waste of internet space, that's what personal blogs are for, my friends.

So, say I want to have kids. Say that this is a choice I've thought through deeply. What did that thought process look like?

-I probably evaluated my reproductive health, to make sure that I could produce a healthy baby without risk to myself or the baby.
-I probably looked at my financial situation to make sure I could support a baby.
-I thought about myself and whether I'm really ready to be in charge of another life, if I can really make that time commitment, if I'm strong enough to go through pregnancy, childbirth, the first few months of sleeplessness, and then the years after. I probably thought about whether this commitment was something I was mentally prepared for.
-I thought about that baby's life, where the baby would go to preschool or school or who would be an influence over the years, what I would do when the baby started to be a child that started to be a teenager that started to be an adult human, how I would guide that life and what help I'd need in guiding that life.
-At the end of all of that thinking, I probably ran one more check against my biases. Is this just the hormones talking? How does my place as a woman in society influence how I feel? Would this baby be something that I'm doing just for myself or is there something deeper, some unspoken but present biological need to pass on my genes? Is the choice to have a baby helpful, sacred? Is this something that I need to be doing? Is it something I'm doing for the right reasons?

Now, having a kid is one of the most important decisions that someone will decide. I would posit that it's a decision that can be made outside of a relationship, but that's neither here nor there. There are a good plenty of logical steps to go through. And, after that, there's a good deal of deep emotion to wade through.

When we take the time to consider our lives, our purpose in the universe, I think we do it in the same way. We think about all the logical considerations and then we sit down and think about how we feel and where that feeling comes from. Do we believe in a higher purpose? Do we just have an instinct in our gut? Do we think that both of those things are infallible?

That interplay between logic and emotion is something I'm interested in. I think we're primed to follow our gut when logic or reason or science tells us otherwise, especially when we're deeply invested in an idea. Even if getting pregnant or having a baby is something that's especially difficult for me because my ovaries are lazy, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't try to have a kid of my own because I feel deeply and within my heart that I would be a fantastic mother. And I may move to other ways of being a maternal figure when my body fails me, but that's only because I've decided that I want to be a mother. I want to help the world in that way. And that decision will be slightly irrational on my part. Nothing about rational, logical science can explain to me why I want to have kids.

I think that may lead to a fundamental difficulty here. There's a line between being in love and being reasonable. And I think when we can resolve the line between love and reason we will have gotten somewhere.