7 Years
My husband sent me a post via ig, and he followed up with “We aint having kids babe”. Immediately I clicked on the post, and understood why he said what he said. Two brilliant dudes, Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd unveiled this metronome in Manhattan’s Union Square this week. 7 Years till we run out Mother Earth’s carbon budget based on the current emission rate. This means more natural disasters, more chaos, worsening famine, increased human displacement, more wildfires, it is an assault on all life forms. Flattening the climate change curve should be just as equally important as flattening the COVID-19 curve.
Lately, I have been overwhelmed with the amount of evil, just vile things humans are capable of. The mistreatment of black women, the intentional negligence to protect them (Breonna Taylor verdict), the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants, the unethical/in-compassionate, poor healthcare system we have in this nation, the mishandling of cases in social work. SIGH.. We have a planet suffering the consequences of the human ego.
Seeing how fucked up the world is, really makes me hesitate to have kids. Call me selfish, call me dramatic, whatever. This is how I feel right now. Becoming a parent is a commitment I have with not only my child but with myself. I don’t want kids to create physical representations of my husband and I, I want kids so they can grow to be contributing members of society. I want them to grow up knowing they can and will make the world a better place. It just breaks me to know I have to engage in conversations at an earlier time, because of just how much exposure there is nowadays. I have experienced this with my nephews because they ask and I rather have the difficult conversations with them as opposed to them misinforming themselves. Kids are forced to grow sooner, and that angers me so much. It should not be this way, but it is.
I don’t have all the answers, no individual does. What I am certain of is if we do not invest in pouring more love into each other, and into our planet (that has given us so much) we are doomed to live even darker times.
If there is just one thing that can stay with you after reading this let it be this: live your life intentionally, pay it forward, be good, do good. This world has enough hate, don’t add to it.
“Everything you gain in life will rot and fall apart, and all that will be left of you is what was in your heart.”
