The Luddite
It is definitely time to get out of here. I should probably stick around and get grading done, but I have no desire to be here. I'm going to go home and make sure some of it gets done. The other thing I have to focus on is the reading I've promised my wife. Talking about our dispute is so difficult that I have put it off constantly. I should revise what I've said, however - it is not the talking to her that is difficult. Our arguments are not vicious, and there is a part of me that is thrilled by intellectual debate, but I shy away from it generally. And when it gets personal, when it actually acquires meaning to the life of the other person or myself, as it has, then I fear it. I fear changing the other person - hurting them, I think, by proving them wrong - and I fear changing myself, or finding myself in a position where I might have to change what I think.
I am not sure to this point what my fear is, beyond simply the stress of the whole argument, the knowledge that we are on different sides and that so much is at stake. Until the time that the pressure builds up and my wife becomes more upset and more saddened by my evasion, I find it easier to avoid the question (this is not to say I am defending myself, or that I think so clearly at every moment about why I am doing what I am doing, or not doing).
There is a strong streak of the primitivist in me, the Luddite, that thinks it would all be so much better if it were just simpler, if we didn't have to think so damn much about such complicated questions. If we didn't have the option of IVF, we wouldn't have the question of whether to use it. My wife says, hey, at least we have the option to try for children, despite her endometriosis. I want the children, deeply I do, but I don't want to do what it seems is our only option if we want to have them. If I didn't have the option, my position would not be any different, except that I wouldn't feel to blame for our predicament, and my wife wouldn't have to struggle against resenting me. My marriage wouldn't be in danger. (Which is not to say that it is - but this is just the sort of divisive situation that could tear at our convictions and beliefs and love if we let it.) All I have to hold on to that is positive is faith that there is a plan - to be more precise, faith that God has a plan, or at least that he can give a consolation that is greater than the pain. I believe that prayers can be answered, but I know they sometimes are not, I do not know what the consolation is, and He has not given it to me to carry it to the others and reassure them.
I am not sure to this point what my fear is, beyond simply the stress of the whole argument, the knowledge that we are on different sides and that so much is at stake. Until the time that the pressure builds up and my wife becomes more upset and more saddened by my evasion, I find it easier to avoid the question (this is not to say I am defending myself, or that I think so clearly at every moment about why I am doing what I am doing, or not doing).
There is a strong streak of the primitivist in me, the Luddite, that thinks it would all be so much better if it were just simpler, if we didn't have to think so damn much about such complicated questions. If we didn't have the option of IVF, we wouldn't have the question of whether to use it. My wife says, hey, at least we have the option to try for children, despite her endometriosis. I want the children, deeply I do, but I don't want to do what it seems is our only option if we want to have them. If I didn't have the option, my position would not be any different, except that I wouldn't feel to blame for our predicament, and my wife wouldn't have to struggle against resenting me. My marriage wouldn't be in danger. (Which is not to say that it is - but this is just the sort of divisive situation that could tear at our convictions and beliefs and love if we let it.) All I have to hold on to that is positive is faith that there is a plan - to be more precise, faith that God has a plan, or at least that he can give a consolation that is greater than the pain. I believe that prayers can be answered, but I know they sometimes are not, I do not know what the consolation is, and He has not given it to me to carry it to the others and reassure them.
posted by J. R. R. Hawking | 3:18 PM
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