“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.” Reinhold Niebuhr.
I've just found this, by the "God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change..." man: perhaps it is well known, but it was not to me. It is brilliant, I think, and a neat preface to a re-post of an article I wrote a few years ago, when I was struggling with parental responsibility: the sentiments expressed there, I feel more intensely now, yet the realization that we can be 'saved by love' is no small comfort.
Parenthood (originally posted on Inishmacsaint, 2007)
People say that I am a good father. It may be true, but it does not reflect any strength of character or personal virtue. Quite the opposite: it is a symptom of loss, of involuntary abandonment, transformation of the person I used to be. Every time I change a dirty nappy, or put Germolene on a grazed knee, or quarrel about who should pick up the kids this time, or serve tepid pasta at 6pm, a piece of me is lost. There is no less of me, but I am less myself. Every tiny sacrifice for the sake of domestic continuity is just that: a sacrifice. The laws of physics demand that such loss is replaced: entropy requires that what replaces it is more smoothed out, dissipated and disordered than what came before; and so it is, molecule by molecule, cell by cell... The result is parenthood incarnate, not the realization of some ideal social virtue, but a slow, largely painless, smothering of vitality and egotism. It is not that we change our priorities for our children, which might indeed be a virtuous impulse; rather, the priorities change us.
This insidious transformation is not without consolations, of course: there is probably nothing to equal the experience of seeing a child's first smile, first steps, their continual pleasure (for now at least!) in having you around, the feeling of watching them sleeping soundly. The principal consolation is that it provides an easy reason to live, to go on, a banal raison d'etre. Just because it's banal doesn't mean it's not true; just because it's true doesn't make it interesting. Parenthood is a pastime, like almost everything else in our existence, a distraction from our purpose, whatever that may be...
My friend Eric Kellerman told me before Sean was born that he was too selfish to have children. From anyone else, this should have been interpreted as mild self-deprecation; from him, it is only the truth, and he is right to believe it. What he can't know of course, is that everyone with a reasonably healthy mind is too selfish to have children; soon enough, though, like Winston Smith coming to love Big Brother, that selfishness slips away, leaving only a remembered trace in photographs, occasional rages, and passing flirtations. This may not be a bad thing—surely it is better to have the consolations of parenthood than to grow old without achieving any other purpose—but it is sheer self-delusion to believe that it is an inherent good, or that it deserves any special reverence. To coin a phrase, "parenthood happens".
And here it is happening, in a good way: a scene from today's Christmas party at Kobe (International) Club. (By the time this picture was taken, Sean had disappeared off with his friend to Wadamisaki (Home's Stadium), where our local football club—Vissel Kobe—was putting on an end of season thank you event for its fans, as we have become (totally unexpectedly):
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| Christmas Party at Kobe Club, 5th December |
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