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My dad got brain cancer when I was 25. That event accelerated our decision to have kids, and as a result our first daughter was born a few days after I turned 2
by war1025 6y ago
My dad got brain cancer when I was 25. That event accelerated our decision to have kids, and as a result our first daughter was born a few days after I turned 27.
The reasoning I came to is that given the probabilities of how children are conceived, if my dad didn't have cancer, our first child would have been someone else than our daughter.
So basically wishing anything different for my dad would be wishing that my daughter didn't exist.
And I guess that made his death easier for me to accept.
- Bakary 6y agoAt the risk of sounding vulgar, moving your hips at a slightly different rhythm or conceiving half a second later or any number of completely minute changes to the timeline would also have resulted in a completely different child. This reminds of the moment when Emil Cioran's mother mentioned how she should have aborted him outright. This led him to the insight that his life was largely an accident contingent on small factors, and that it therefore need not be taken so seriously.
- war1025 6y agoI guess that's my point. Wishing for anything different in the past means wishing away anything good that happened after that moment.
- missedthecue 6y ago"any number of completely minute changes to the timeline would also have resulted in a completely different child." Can you prove this?
- Bakary 6y agoIt's the inevitable logical conclusion based on how human reproduction works. The chance of getting the same spermatozoon in there, the same random genetic variations, the same developmental conditions and so forth is infinitesimally small if the same exact conditions are not met. Even if we ignore all of that, there's still the swirling chaos of causality to contend with, forever altered by that small change...
- Dirlewanger 6y agoChaos theory
- xyzelement 6y agoAmazing wisdom. In Judaism we say that bad things that happen to us are enablers of the good things. Whatever one believes, it's a really good attitude. Thank you for sharing your story.
- prawn 6y agoYou might appreciate the film About Time. Ignore the cover image which sells it short. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2194499/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2194499/ The cover and premise push it as a rom com, but I enjoyed the relationship between the son and father much more.
- icebergonfire 6y agoSeconding this recommendation, under the dressing of a rom-com it thoroughly explores the _what-if_ aspect we are discussing here.