Sarah Jo Alban

“Perhaps there are still children who have not eaten men? Save the children. . . .”

– Lu Xun, “A Madman’s Diary”

I don’t think I’ll ever have children.

What I say next might be an excuse.  But I don’t feel confident I’ll know how to teach them right from wrong, how to live life correctly, successfully and to the utmost vibrancy.  I wouldn’t feel confident saying, “You’re doing this right,” or, “That’s the way to win life, alright.  Keep it up,” or even, “That’s destructive, and you need to stop.”

Who am I, as another confused human being figuring out existence, to say?

Could anyone ever definitively know how to live life correctly?  I don’t.  You could imagine literally any circumstance — any big or little thing in a day — and know I wouldn’t know the good from bad picking.  (This excludes common-sense questions with theoretically black-and-white choices: to kill or not to kill, to steal or not to steal, etc.  And they rarely show up so black-and-white in real life anyway.)

Maybe the only thing I’ve ever done certainly correctly is to have generally gotten good grades in school.  But any idiot could know getting good grades is the right thing to do.  You can’t go wrong.  Grades are the only ostensibly irrefutably good thing a kid could strive for; they grade your existence.  They’re like a microcosm of life, and the teacher your God.

A — Paradise

F — Hell

C — a few months in Purgatory

But the grades don’t fulfill anything, not in themselves.

I know a guy who seemingly lived through a morally ambiguous childhood, which lacked a sound portion of guidance in concretely distinguishing between right and wrong.  The irony is, today he looks like a great father, unquestionably great.

So I wonder deeply and often how this person came to be who he is today, since I can’t imagine transforming similarly.  I can’t imagine shifting out of this Questering uncertainty of ethics into a fully confident understanding of them — into a life code so concrete I’d feel confident enough to pass its gift along to another human being.

Of course, this man might have learned right from wrong by observing others, as I sometimes feel I do.  But could teachers, mentors and friends — and the minute lessons we extract from them — possibly replace the guidance of parents?  I won’t rule out the possibility of such a substitution, but I’d absolutely burst in awe if that really were possible.  How bittersweet, depending on the kid, that parents could be so optional.

Regardless, no kids of mine will exist unless I find my own code to live by.  I can’t bequeath a flawed code, and no substitutions will assume chief parental roles for them.

Maybe the potential detriment — and entirely possible prevention thereof — of future generations is best presented in T. S. Eliot’s words.  And since the hour’s late, I’ll assume Eliot did write best and modify his phrasing only slightly:

* This is the way the world ends,

This is the way the world ends,

Not with a bang

But with the whimpering of our children.

* Thanks, Eliot.  Thanks a lot actually.