The other day I drifted down a brief spiral of wanting kids.
I was walking Joey through my new neighborhood, wondering about the occupants in these unfamiliar houses. I see a lot of parents pushing strollers down the sidewalk and on the weekend I hear echoes of children playing nearby. I have to admit, it’s a welcome change up. Our old next door neighbors were notorious partiers, hosting literal outdoor ragers, playing heart-pounding bass that reverberated through our walls all night long. You might assume that our move to this family-centric neighborhood signals a desire to move into a baby making phase of life. But there, you would be wrong. I’m very up front about not wanting kids, I tell everyone who asks (and many who don’t).
I’m quite maternal, but I’ve given a lot of that energy to my parents, who’ve each needed great amounts of time intensive care. I know they will likely need assistance in the future, as we all do in later years. I haven’t felt a strong desire to usher a baby into the world and then dig into the otherworldly work of raising them. Put simply, I’ve spent the majority of my lifetime taking care of others. I will always be taking care of others in some capacity. I can’t see myself volunteering for the most momentous form of caretaking. For me, refraining from parenthood is vital self-care.
Now that you know how steadfast I am in this childless vision, you might understand why catching myself daydreaming of family life was so perplexing. I actually laughed, thinking, no no there’s been a crossing of satellites, zapping a pixelated version of the wrong sitcom through my mind. But of course, whenever I tell people who have kids that I intend to remain childless, they laugh at me. With a twinkle in their eye, they admit to feeling the same, until one day they didn’t. Or if you’re my dad, you get a blunt well I didn’t think I wanted kids until I had you.
So I remain open to being proven wrong. I know our minds can change. Perhaps I am overly aware of this and live partially in fear of that sneaky jump shift. When I lapsed into family dream land, I had to examine the impulse—I’m turning 30 this year and thus steeling myself for the possibility of wanting a family. I’ve long believed that hormones will transform you into a baby person during your 30s, but that’s actually a myth.
As I combed through this hazy desire, I envisioned the planned out dinners, the scheduling of play dates, the mornings with school drop-offs as clear destination. I thought of the nights that would have to be cozy, because school is so miserable and I’d want to make life bearable (okay clearly my own experience is creeping in). It struck me that all of this dreaming was missing one specific thing: a child. I wasn’t excited about seeing the art work from class, or talking through problems with a preteen. I didn’t long for the soft baby, swaddled to my chest. I was fantasizing about the daily structure that raising a family demands.
If I had to constantly think about waking up in time to wake kids up in time for school, or fetching them from soccer practice and how to squeeze in dinner with enough time for homework, I’d have limited slots of space for myself. In my fantasy, I’d be more productive during those precious moments. But in reality, I’d probably be exhausted from all the parenting and just want to brush my hair and stare into oblivion. (One of my favorite hobbies).
It seems I’m longing for parenthood, without the parenting. Especially after the holiday haze, I’m in need of structure for the year ahead. I’m an atom with potential energy, looking for a kick into the kinetic stage. It’s very easy to wander on auto pilot, fulfilling the very basic level of what I need to do. I still manage to get work done, but because I spend lots of my day in a sprawling half stage of work, I don’t have the energy to play with the boundaries of my imagination.
Finding myself here is weird. After a lifetime of tumultuous circumstances, chaos is my norm. Chaos requires me to carve all my time around it, inspiring me with challenges while I wake up just to keep going. I’ve become accustomed to the brink, believing—partially out of necessity—that’s where everything innovative occurs.
When we find a way to jump from the precipice and actually fly, I think that’s our inner genius saving us. I know this cycle so well. External circumstances become so loudly overwhelming that genius turns up the volume and floods the airwaves, guiding us to safety within an inch of our life.
The kind of genius I’m talking about is not Jimmy Neutron or Albert Einstein. It is not rare, but a core thread unifying humanity. According to Emerson, it is the streak of divine within all of us:
A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.
So of course we thirst for the thrill that awakens our brilliance. Unfortunately, living in the swing from one extreme to another is not a sustainable way to live. It is one thing to navigate a pathway of rolling disasters. To acquaint yourself with steadiness and listen for the soft voice of genius on a regular basis, is another skill all together.
Seeing as a kid isn’t what I want, I went to staples and bought a planner. It’s been years since I’ve committed to the planning mentality. It sounds strange to say, but it feels courageous. My recommitment to planning is a commitment to life itself. I am not castaway at sea, I am within the realm of stability: I can make decisions alongside the universe’s ebbs and flows. We may not be in charge of our destiny, but maybe it’s within my destiny to make a few plans.
Within the planning, is the practice of genius. It’s a trick to access the divine, in a measured way. Making space in the day to intentionally walk toward the precipice. It’s no wonder people at the top of their field, who’s work could be categorized as Cosmic Boundary Expansion™ have routine practices bordering on superstitious. It is ritual that anchors the vessel for our freewheeling genius to flow.
A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And, by participating in the ritual, you are participating in the myth. And since myth is a projection of the depth wisdom of the psyche, by participating in a ritual, participating in the myth, you are being, as it were, put in accord with that wisdom, which is the wisdom that is inherent within you anyhow. Your consciousness is being re-minded of the wisdom of your own life.
In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell talks about our ancestral connection to ritual and what humanity has lost in the expansion of cities and global societies. He passed away in 1987, but his words are hauntingly relevant.
Society has provided [children] no rituals by which they become members of the tribe, of the community. All children need to be twice born, to learn to function rationally in the present world, leaving childhood behind…If you want to find out what it means to have a society without any rituals, read The New York Times.
It’s no surprise we are drawn in by tech, which is designed to prey on the very part of our humanity that wishes for connection to greater forces. Tech has even replaced the obvious start to the morning: staring at the ceiling, contemplating our place within the ether. Instead the timeline lassoes us into another day of absentminded existence. We’ve gradually given up any room for nothingness, where the precipice resides. Who can blame us? Such intangible elements were once enshrined by rituals, passed down through our small communities. Instead of a one-size-fits-all god, we had deities that helped us understand our specific landscape. Now we find ourselves swimming through impersonal cities, charting paths through digital maps because we can no longer find our place in the physical realm.
Perhaps my desire for children is the inner divine, asking me for a little more attention. What if I turned my maternal instincts toward my creative impulses, treating them with careful structure?
In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell encourages us to find a way to our own rituals.
You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen…Our life has become so economic and practical in its orientation that, as you get older, the claims of the moment upon you are so great, you hardly know where the hell you are, or what it is you intended. You are always doing something that is required of you. Where is your bliss station? You have to try to find it.
Like everything worth doing, this is easier said than done. There is a measure of difficulty that comes with changing our habits, but most of us have a little time each day that we give over to the gods of tech, that we could be giving to our inner genius. I’ve found whatever I set out to do with real intention, manifests in ways I could not have dreamed. The universe is always part of the conversation.
In The Sabbath, a seminal text on Jewish ritual, Abraham Joshua Heschel notes that our current society is geared towards acquiring space, but we have forgotten time. In practicing sabbath, we create a “cathedral in time”. We act as though the material world can give us back time. But it is our most sacred and fleeting resource. The world has been designed to hold us in perpetual business, so we can’t keep up or look within.
In carving a sliver from the day to meet with our inner genius, we can slowly unhook ourselves from the grip of false gods. With a little planning, we can walk toward the precipice and find the endless bounty, glimmering, ever present.
That’s all for this week.
xx
James
Great piece! Been following now is good since the start and this essay might be my favorite, the way different elements are tied together *chef's kiss*