A BIG PICTURE THOUGHT....

I was sitting on my back porch, watching the sun go down behind the hills, while looking through the cabbage palms with their prehistoric profiles when suddenly I had this thought that "my life has never been dead since the birth of this earth!"

Somehow life sprung up on this clod of dirt, which at a certain point was also passed on in the shape of human beings.  Egg and sperm, ever so small, had to be carried by live beings and was passed on while they were still alive. So in fact, that speck-of-life life never died, it always got passed on as the stick in a relay and that life got enriched by experience all along the way.  (Nowadays we may 'put life on hold' in liquid nitrogen, but who knows what the consequences of that will be).

I suddenly had this vision of a thread without a beginning, at least not that I could see, but of which I was the end. My specific little speck-of-life must have been the same since the beginning of time except that it got more concentrated perhaps, like a consomme (concentrated clear broth). The value I added to it must have been a combination of what I learned from my parents, through education and how I experienced life.
But the important ingredient for humans surely, must be the degree of awareness a person brings into the broth before it is passed on. Does that make sense to you?
I think that it is awareness, this individual consiousness that is the x-factor that contributes to the collective consciousness. I passed on that speck-of-life to my children. They, in their turn, must now bring their consciousness into it...

Once children are independent beings one's life gets a different meaning and focus. The emphasis is no longer on improving that particular speck-of-life, but on playing a role in influencing the milieu, the environment, physical and otherwise, for the good of all.
In other words, I have changed from being the plant in a garden to becoming the gardener (use the imagination here!).
I no longer make life (or rather, pass it on), but can maintain and improve the environment in which all plants can thrive....

And that is why people who choose not to have children, are not necessarily let off the hook in regard to their responsibility to society at large. But, that is going to be a topic for next time.