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Oct. 30th, 2008 01:41 pmA few years ago when I was bored I took a physics class on black holes & quantum mechanics over my lunch breaks. It was fun (and conceptually one of the most difficult subjects I've tried to wrap my head around) but there was one point of discussion that has lingered in my thoughts ever since: theoretically, if you fell into a black hole and could turn around and look back out (which of course you couldn't survive falling into a black hole, but ignore that for now) what you would see would be the entire universe, from the moment of its creation to the moment of its destruction, all as one. I would imagine that the wonder of this would be enough to probably distract you from the horrifying fact that you'd just fallen into a black hole. In fact I imagine it would be overwhelming -- awesome (in the full and original meaning of that word), beautiful, and terrible all at once.
I think that having children is the closest we can come to experiencing that same sense of things in real life. When I look at the twins, I don't see some drooling, uncoordinated things with no intelligence or merit of self as some others Not Here have postulated. I see the future and the past all collapsed into one. I see echoes of my own childhood at the same as I can see myself as a little old lady, surrounded by grandkids and maybe even great-grandkids, some distant day from now. The moment each one of them was born, they stretched back and became a part of my life from the very beginning, hidden but clearly there waiting to happen.
In my children I see infinite possibilities: there is nothing they cannot become, all the choices of a lifetime are still ahead of them waiting to be made. Those choices will narrow the multitudes of futures ahead of them, but it will also propel them forward, hopefully in brightness. Lives happen so fast, and so achingly slow at the same time.[3] My older daughter is still a small baby in my arms, one hand wrapped around my finger and smiling up at me, even as she embraces the goth tomboy preteen self-image and has a fit when I suggest she's gonna need to get a bra before too much longer. The twins are already different people than when they were born, starting that process of becoming all that they will be. It is terrifying. I hope that the mistakes I make as a parent are gentle ones and do not unduly limit and constrain who they will be, but I know that mistakes are inevitable. Some days are so hard that you take them one minute, one heartbreak at a time. I can't help but think about the things I've given up to do this, time that is gone and opportunities that may never come up again. Parenting leaves you feeling battered. It is endless worry. It is a constant, exhausting effort just to keep from being crushed by it. And it is awesome -- the joy is like no other. It fills my heart like light from the whole universe has come to gather there and warm me.
And much like black holes, once you've fallen in there's no escape.
The sprogs are half a year old today, and also the whole of my lifetime.
--
[1] since observation of a phenomenon changes/sets that phenomenon, one wonders if someone did manage to fall down a black hole and survive long enough to look out and see the whole history of the universe at once, would that then immediately and irrevokably set the paths of all our lives? Ie, would Fate, in that very greek-mythology sense of the inevitable, require someone to do exactly that in order to bring about its own existence?[2]
[2] yes, I've been taking cold meds. Your point?
[3] I also can't help but wonder, in a maudlin sort of way, if I'd ever been able to see the infinite potential of my own life with such clarity, above the noise of the day-to-day, if I might've made something more of myself than I have.
I think that having children is the closest we can come to experiencing that same sense of things in real life. When I look at the twins, I don't see some drooling, uncoordinated things with no intelligence or merit of self as some others Not Here have postulated. I see the future and the past all collapsed into one. I see echoes of my own childhood at the same as I can see myself as a little old lady, surrounded by grandkids and maybe even great-grandkids, some distant day from now. The moment each one of them was born, they stretched back and became a part of my life from the very beginning, hidden but clearly there waiting to happen.
In my children I see infinite possibilities: there is nothing they cannot become, all the choices of a lifetime are still ahead of them waiting to be made. Those choices will narrow the multitudes of futures ahead of them, but it will also propel them forward, hopefully in brightness. Lives happen so fast, and so achingly slow at the same time.[3] My older daughter is still a small baby in my arms, one hand wrapped around my finger and smiling up at me, even as she embraces the goth tomboy preteen self-image and has a fit when I suggest she's gonna need to get a bra before too much longer. The twins are already different people than when they were born, starting that process of becoming all that they will be. It is terrifying. I hope that the mistakes I make as a parent are gentle ones and do not unduly limit and constrain who they will be, but I know that mistakes are inevitable. Some days are so hard that you take them one minute, one heartbreak at a time. I can't help but think about the things I've given up to do this, time that is gone and opportunities that may never come up again. Parenting leaves you feeling battered. It is endless worry. It is a constant, exhausting effort just to keep from being crushed by it. And it is awesome -- the joy is like no other. It fills my heart like light from the whole universe has come to gather there and warm me.
And much like black holes, once you've fallen in there's no escape.
The sprogs are half a year old today, and also the whole of my lifetime.
--
[1] since observation of a phenomenon changes/sets that phenomenon, one wonders if someone did manage to fall down a black hole and survive long enough to look out and see the whole history of the universe at once, would that then immediately and irrevokably set the paths of all our lives? Ie, would Fate, in that very greek-mythology sense of the inevitable, require someone to do exactly that in order to bring about its own existence?[2]
[2] yes, I've been taking cold meds. Your point?
[3] I also can't help but wonder, in a maudlin sort of way, if I'd ever been able to see the infinite potential of my own life with such clarity, above the noise of the day-to-day, if I might've made something more of myself than I have.
