Children are Good-- And necessary

Children are Good-- And necessary

Right?

We as humans have been raising children for millenia; before us in the last thousand years, our evolutionary ancestors did this for millions of years. We are animals, yes. God sparked or not, our roots stretch beyond horizons that are difficult to fathom. Before the modern times of the demographic shift (children surviving in large numbers, becoming dependents rather than immediate assets in the micro-economy), offspring were key to survival because of sheer labor on the farm, or as a defense across the vast expanses where various tribes or factions would threaten families' livelihoods or existence.

We live in a modern, or post-modern age, where children can seem like a drawback, like anchors on the modest ships that we, their parents, are, floating across the waters of life. They can seem like a drag.

But of course, we still need them. 

Children are Good-- And necessary

Right?

We as humans have been raising children for millenia; before us in today's times, in the last thousand years, our evolutionary ancestors did this for millions of years. We are animals, yes. God-sparked or not, our roots stretch beyond horizons that are difficult to fathom. Before the modern times of the demographic shift (children surviving in large numbers, becoming dependents rather than immediate assets in the micro-economy), offspring were key to survival because of sheer labor on the farm, or as a defense across the vast expanses where various tribes or factions would threaten families' livelihoods or existence.

We live in a modern, or post-modern age, where children can seem like a drawback--like anchors on the modest ships that we, their parents--are, floating across the waters of life. They can seem like a drag.

But of course, we still need them. 

They need us, we need them.

As parents we discover how we fit into their lives and they in ours.

No one fit is the same. Just like any relationship, it is unique.

Every parent needs their  autonomy; but they, these smaller dependent organisms, like limbs and fingers, a larger, older body needs their appendages, which children become as an adult parent matures and ages.

To a larger degree the community, communities in which all of us live, is the same.  Parents without children, which seems impossible, is possible through any community. Society has its independents and dependents; in the end we are all dependent on one another.

As lonely as a person may be: he or she as a hiker, a driver, a lone customer at a rural night cafe or an urban early morning diner-- that loner depends on others not to drive in their path, not to rob or harm them, not to disrupt their life in a way that obstructs their existence.

Everything, everyone has its place, literal family or no. 

Thus, a parent, and more hopefully a duo, more intrinsically connected and interwoven with their own blood and charge, forge forth to provide and develop their youth.

This is the family.

This is life. Parent of one, five, eight, or none, we are all parents. 

And we are all children.

We need grandparents, uncles, aunts, good neighbors in every sense.

And yes, we need our children, as much if not more than they need us.

The life cycle continues.

The earth, our great wet planet, needs parenting too. It is our child.

We come from it, we impact it, we leave it better or worse.

This is humanity's great collective marriage. 

And we, its children. Are we anthropods, us gangly bipods, necessary children to our home planet?

I think we are. And all its other iterations of the seven odd kingdoms, protozoa, fungi, and strange invisible eukaryotes: we all belong, we are all life's children.

And the parent from afar, it must certainly exist.

Children need parents, thus it ever was.

Who is the parent of your soul? Is it only the vast sky and beyond and above, the larger universe?

You are a child.

God is your parent. Or rather, there must be teams of them.

In the biological sense this is true to the tune of thousands of progenitors. 

I submit that this is cosmically so as well.