My children were on vacation last week. In order to economize on babysitting, my wife and I each took off some time to watch them. I had two days, and on one of them we went to the zoo.
I love the zoo, not least because I loved it as a kid and my children still love it. I like watching the wonder and joy in their eyes as they watch the animals. Aside from the bathroom trips and the incessant requests for popcorn, they are engaged.
I also enjoy zoos, though, because they help me to reflect on our own lives. Zoos bring home to me the basics of life. We are born; we nourish ourselves; we breed; and we die. The the enormous bulk of life on earth the fundamental goal is simply to produce more life. Children are the point.
There are many things that we strive for, whether it is knowledge, fame, or the accumulation of stuff. But in the end, of course, none of it really matters – only the lives we create and personally touch. I cannot articulate the love that I feel for my children, and I am grateful for those moments that remind me that this, in fact, is what it is all about. For humans, though, it goes beyond mere procreation; it is not enough just to create life. We also nurture and shape it.
And here is the paradox. I know that I am not an ideal father, but I do my best to at least do no evil. I also realize that if I am privileged to reach a ripe old age, I will never regret having spent more time with my children, even if it means that I would have written less. I know this. But for much of the time that I do spend with my children I feel anxious, guilty, and a little resentful that I am not working.
They being to annoy me; I crave time alone. I do spend a lot of time with my kids, but it is not all quality time. Much of it is conflicted.
It is usually at about this point in my reflections that we come to the lions. On occasion we’ve been lucky enough to find them with cubs. Watching the interaction between cubs and parents is little different qualitatively from watching household cats and kittens, but with lions the entire charge is certainly dialed up a notch. The cubs grab and play with their parents, who are generally gracious. Until they aren’t. Then they take the cub in their mouths and throw it several yards. The cub yelps a bit, but is back soon enough doing the same thing.
What do lions have to teach human parents? Maybe that it’s fine to look after oneself, not only our kids. That we, at base, are animals too, and that we too can draw strong boundaries between us and our children with no guilt. That we can love and protect our children fiercely and recognize that they are in fact the very purpose of our own existence, while at the same time carving out a space for our own lives.
It was not a particularly light day at the zoo, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
