This video is sponsored by Skillshare, click the link in the description for more information.
Most of our lives are spent in situations of numbing sterility. There is usually no
option but to conform and obey boring rules. We don’t in our work generally create
anything of particular wonder or interest. We don’t know how to paint or play Chopin’s
Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor. We can’t personally manufacture an iphone; we don’t
don’t know how to extract oil from the ground. And yet, without being conscious of the specifics,
we are at points capable of doing something properly miraculous: we can make another person.
We can conjure up the limbs and organs of a fellow creature. We can create a liver,
we can design someone else’s brain, we can – by ingesting a mixed diet perhaps including
bananas, cheese sandwiches and ginger biscuits – make fingers, we can connect neurones
that will transmit thoughts about the history of the Ancient Persians or the workings of
the dishwasher. We can choreograph the birth of an organic machine that will probably still
be going close to a hundred years from now. We can be the master coordinator and chief
designer of a product more advanced than any technology and more complex and interesting
than the greatest work of art. Having a child definitively refutes any worry about our lack
of creativity and dismantles (at least for while) the envy we might otherwise feel about
the inventiveness of others. They may have written a stirring song, started and sold
a bio-engineering company or plotted an engaging novel. But we will have created the oddest
yet most inspiring work of art and science around: one that is alive; one that will develop
its own centers of happiness and secrecy; that will one day do its homework, get a job,
hate us, forgive us, end up being, despite itself, a bit like us and eventually, make
humans of its own that can spawn themselves into perpetuity. However much they may resent
one another, grow apart or be worn down by the humdrum nature of family life, parents
and children are never entirely able to get past the supernatural sequence of events that
connects creators and created. Because two people met fifteen years ago in a friend’s
kitchen, liked the look of one another, swapped phone numbers and went out for dinner, there
is now – across the table – a being with a particular sort of nose, a distinctive emotional
temperament and a way of smiling that (as everyone remarks) unnervingly echoes that
of a dead maternal grandfather. Parenting ineluctably
demands that one address the greatest, founding philosophical question: what is a good life?
As we go about answering it live in our words and actions over long years, we will at least
know that we have been spared the one great fear that otherwise haunts us and usually
manifests itself around work: that of not being able to make a difference. There will
not be the remotest danger of lacking impact, only of unwittingly exerting the wrong kind.
We will as parents be the biographers, coaches, teachers, chefs, photographers, masters and slaves of
our new charges. Our work will lend us the opportunity to show our worst, but also our
best selves in action: it is the particular words we will find, the touch of our hands,
the encouraging look only we will be able to give, the swerve towards lenience or the
brave defence of principles that will make a decisive difference to the sorrows and joys
of another human being. Who we are every day, the specific individuals we will have matured
into, will have an unparalleled power to exert a beneficial influence on somebody else’s
life. We will – in our role as parents – be terrified, exhausted, resentful, enchanted
and forever spared any lingering doubt as to our significance or role on the earth.
We partnered with Skillshare today as it is a fantastic starting point for anyone looking
to learn new skills, and they have given us an amazing offer to pass on to you. A premium
membership gives you unlimited access to all courses and usually starts at around $10 a
month. But the first 1000 people to sign up at the first link in the description will
get their first two months for 99 cents. If you haven't heard of Skillshare before it's
home to thousands of classes in Graphic Design, Animation, Web Development, Music, Photography,
Design and more. You can start learning how to do just about anything. In two months you
could easily learn the skills you need to start a new hobby or business. Is there a
project that you have been dreaming of completing but just aren't sure if you have the skills
to do it? Why not start right now and sign up to Skillshare using the link below. You
have nothing to lose and potentially valuable life skills to gain. And you would be helping
out our channel too. Take a look at the link for more information.