#rickwebb

"The thing about babies is that they grow up."

My high school girlfriend, peeved with my existentialist outlook, once told me I should perhaps consider suicide to "cut down on the excess population," a problem which, it being the 80s, was of intense concern to any socially-minded teenager like myself. The newspeak-tinged "green revolution," along with China's brutal population control policies went far to sunset the population explosion as a global concern in the public consciousness, eventually being replaced by global warming. Yet here we are, speeding past 7 billion. In my life, I have watched it zoom past 4, 5, 6 and 7 billion. 

Perhaps if I had been a more forward looking social activist, I could have skipped my Malthusian panic and skipped straight to greenworry. I do, however, have the population scare to thank for the impact it had on my high school girlfriend, who couldn't come out and say how peeved she was with me for saying having a baby was socially immoral. Because her reaction catalyzed something in me. While our relationship didn't last enough for her to reap what she sowed, before too long I realized that I desperately, madly wanted children.

In short, I wanted a baby, even though there was absolutely no rational way I could justify its impact on the planet. It was the first time my stringent morals conflicted with my personal life desires. And I was lucky enough to have it happen when I was morally and ethically unflinching enough to face up to it, before the burden of actually earning a living tempered my moral fervor. 

The experience was one of the myriad steps a baby must take in its journey to becoming an adult: confronting the dichotomy between their own desire and society. And that is what I want to witness in a child. To spend every day watching them grow up. 

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thank you for the response, but no such extension was installed on her computer - she doesn't have any tumblr extensions installed, as she rarely uses tumblr.