You’d think that the further along in this pregnancy I get, the less surreal the process would be. But actually my experience been the opposite, particularly over the last week. I’m starting to have Deep Thoughts. (Run for your lives!)
After a lifetime of being a single entity, I’m now a double one. There are two of us in here now.
That’s—just—mindblowing. Because we are all, every last one of us, walking this world alone. No matter how closely we are attached to others, no matter how deeply we love or commit ourselves to another’s welfare, we are always separated by the impassable barrier of the skin and the singularity of the individual it contains.
Except right now. Right now, I am actually, completely, inseparably connected to another human being. Essentially, I’ve transcended the singularity of human existence.
I mean, holy fucking hell. And I thought I was just cooking up another white guy.
What’s equally remarkable about this transcendence is how utterly mundane it is. Every woman who’s ever given birth has done it. It’s strange (and, it strikes me, sad) that one half of the human race is biologically barred from experiencing it.
I thought of digging up some wise words to anchor this musing with something pithy from someone smarter than I am. But then I reconsidered, having, you know, just realized that pregnancy temporarily solves an ontological problem at the very core of so much religion and philosophy. This post is feeling pretty damned clever already.
What do you think?
If only I could experience pregnancy, the solution at the core of religion and philosophy, without the side effects (morning sickness, 18 years of child rearing, etc.). Meanwhile, it’s really only an ontological mystery for those who can’t/don’t get preggers, right? So it’s me and all the XYs out there who created religion and philosophy in order to own and control the process (i.e., breeders).
Exactly! Maybe this problem would’ve been addressed in ancient Greece had women been allowed to be literate. Alas, as we well know, ovaries + education = danger!
The corollary to the theorem above is that the end result is “hysteria.”
Trivia: “Hysteria” was also the name of a holiday honoring Aphrodite in ancient Greek times: Festival of the Womb.