[Originally posted July 6, 2006 at MySpace]
Between watching Part 1 of Manor House on DVD and catching Millions on HBO, I've come to the conclusion that if I could somehow rig the situation so I wound up with a tyke like the main young'uns in those entertainments, I'd be quite willing to have a kid.
Both Anthony and Damian in Millions are clever and thoughtful. Anthony is pragmatic (if somewhat cynical) and has an incredible head for math and economics, while his little brother Damian is altruistic and moral to a fault. In the first episode of Manor House, 10-year-old Guy gives an amazingly insightful breakdown of privilege and freedom while talking with his tutor, and he seems genuinely appreciative and grateful for the things the servants do for him. Lovely boys, all 3 of them.
So if I had some kind of guarantee from the universe that I'd produce a smart, perceptive, kind, considerate son (with no major health problems and a face that wouldn't scare the livestock), I'd be quite willing to undertake the whole reproducing enchilada. (I'm leaning more towards a son, because I don't know how I'd manage to raise a daughter not to be self-destructive. I can't even do that for myself sometimes.)
But there's nothing remotely like a guarantee for having a kid. There's no guarantee that you'll have a kid that combines both parents' best attributes, or even that the kid will split the difference between the best and the worst of the parents. There's no guarantee that you won't have one of those kids who's born without a conscience, who beats up toddlers and hunts down pets no matter what kind of example or direction the parents provide. There's no guarantee that you'll produce a healthy kid; that all that partying you did in your 20s won't catch up with you in the most horrible way; that although you don't think you're too old to have a kid, your body might have other ideas. There's no guarantee you'll survive giving birth, and if that isn't a colossal gamble, I don't know what is.
One observation that I thought Anthony Robbins (of all people) got quite right is that the quality of your life can be determined how comfortable you can be with uncertainty. Perhaps another aspect of that is realizing how much uncertainty surrounds every aspect of everything human beings do and accepting that uncertainty. In a sense, there's no guarantee that I'll survive the weekend (particularly considering the daquiri consumption I have planned). At some point, I'll have to come to grips with how little control I truly have over much of anything. Maybe then, I can make a semi-rational choice about having a kid rather than saying, "Could I have one of them there British cherubs?"
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