Chris Jepson: If it hurts

To the degree that truth reflects reality, there is legitimacy to the expression, “I am only as happy as my unhappiest child.”

Sadness and sorrow are part and parcel of the human experience. Loss is axiomatic, built-in (we all die for example) to the human experience. Religions were created by mankind to deal with the inexplicable—the ambiguity of our origins and the grief associated with human existence. I have found religious explanations inadequate for either.

Try (claim) as we may, there is no larger meaning to the human experience other than what each of us individually discovers from birth to death. We (our species) are hard-wired to propagate, to get our genes into the next generation and so, arguably, there is no more important task that any of us ever undertakes than to successfully prepare one’s progeny to thrive. If I were creating a dogma, I would make that obligation a prime directive.

A child is born and you count the toes and fingers and sigh. You look at his beautiful, perfect body and hold the mother’s hand and tell her, “Good job. Well done.” You tear-up with relief that the birthing ordeal is over for mother and child and that the launch was successful. His features are ideal, the skin flawless and his cry strong and firm. You leave the hospital and weep for joy. That is how life can begin.

Oh, and the first time you wash your child and smell his head, is there anything that ever again smells half so sweet? The wispy hair mingled in the unmistakable fragrance of new life. You bury your nose in his neck and inhale his warmth and strength. You kiss his arms, his legs, his stomach, his feet. He is you but he isn’t – he is something you created. He didn’t ask to be born, to have a consciousness. That is the gift new life is.

And one day he smiles, and it as if the sun has entered your heart and your chest bursts with gratitude. He walks. He talks. He laughs. He grows more beautiful than a Greek God. And the years pass. You educate. You advantage with opportunities and experiences. You introduce art and culture. You stress values. And the years pass.

And then it starts. The look one day that chills you to your core. The brushes with the law that you attribute to youthful excess (were you not once yourself a teenager who stupidly bumped into authority?). As a parent, you recall that it “really” all began on Oct. 6, 1996, the night of the Democratic presidential debates when he drove the family car onto a subdivision brick wall. Incident after incident. And you are there attempting to pick-up the pieces, trying to understand what is happening. Offering counsel, securing advice. And the years pass. And the sorrows multiply relentlessly.

Until you can do no more. And you wonder how could this be, how could a life so promising destroy itself with alcoholism and drug addiction? How could so many attempts at rehabilitation fail? And you weep. Not for yourself, but for the wounded child — this human being who did not ask for consciousness — that somehow, someway, ultimately, you failed to protect.

My father had an expression, “If it hurts, don’t do it.”

Life hurts. What then?