What to expect
Expecting
verb (used with object)
- to look forward to; regard as likely to happen; anticipate the occurrence or the coming of:
I expect to read it. I expect him later. She expects that they will come. - to look for with reason or justification:
We expect obedience. - Informal. to suppose or surmise; guess:
I expect that you are tired from the trip. - to anticipate the birth of (one's child):
Paul and Sylvia expect their second very soon.
I've used this strategy before, I know. Giving the game away with a dictionary definition is such a simple segue into a blog that it should be beneath me. Again, it isn't.
We (not Paul and Sylvia) are expecting the birth of a child. The well-paid and expert expectators that we visited to view the child in utero tell us that we will have a girl on July 19th or thereabouts. Definitions 4,2 and 1 are aligned here – we have justification to look forward to the birth of our child.
I have expected children before. I have also been married before. But I have not, hitherto, held these desirable states simultaneously. I am, inadvertently, upholding Catholic family values for the first time. Nevertheless, there is compounded joy in having many things go well. And I like joy.
Kirsha is also joyful about expecting a baby. She thought it would take a while for her to 'fall' pregnant. It didn't. About a billion generations of our ancestors also fell pregnant, so how could she doubt the efficacy of our evolution-given efficient reproductive engines? Of course, many potential ancestors of many potential sexual organisms failed to get laid, or failed to get knocked up, or didn't produce fertile offspring. That's the very thing that honed the engine.
Not all kids are planned. My first two wonderful children (one of whom is now a wonderful adult) were, in part, the result of my natural capacity to defer the consideration of consequences while simultaneously seeking pleasure. I can't really admire the ineffable subtlety of evolution entraining biologically useful behaviours in me by making them pleasurable. That would be similar to commending thermodynamics, or extolling the virtues of the law of gravity (which is a pretty bloody good law, actually).
That this kid, this homunculus-human, this proto-girl was planned is, however, a joyful joining of our biological nature and our human capacity to make choices. I can make a decision on behalf of my genes but also through the 'me' that they engender, to propagate them. They exert their influence by contributing to my state of mind. In fact, they elegantly exert their pressure by enabling me – I am conscious because of their inadvertent motivations. This process is all the more exquisite because it produces its outcome without any semblance of goal seeking.
As I said, I can make choices. Delia, my advisor on delicate public matters, delicately advised me to produce a blog confirming the rumour that I have herein clearly confirmed. Initially I resisted. And then I thought of a potential time to come when that rumour is an adult, and that adult wonders what those whose wills and drives produced her all those years before had on their minds at the time. This blog, then, is my answer.
This contrivance that induces in me my desire to pump out children, and words, also enables me to be aware of, but not enslaved by, the mid-term repercussions of my actions. A quick glance at definition 3 reminds me: I expect to be very tired from this trip.
Jonathan Wherrett (image has been cropped from the original).