Mary Kenny“Human life is not some consumerised product… whereby only those who pass the test of being ‘chosen’ may be regarded as admissible”, writes Mary Kenny
I am wholly in favour of peaceful street protest – indeed, I think it’s an authentic method of direct democracy – and those who felt moved to support a demonstration to repeal the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution were entitled to take to the streets last weekend. And to put any message they wanted on their placards.
And yet I found one particular message really quite creepy. Two young boys had posters attached to their bodies with the words: “I was a chosen child.”
Whoever arranged this surely offended against the first principle of parenthood manners. You should never swank about the status of your children: it is always seen as a slap in the face to any parent whose children are deemed to be lesser in any way.
As a matter of a fact, in many cultures, boasting about the status of a child has been considered ‘unlucky’. In Sicily, for example, if you praise a young child’s gifts, beauty or privilege, the parents may well ask you to desist, for fear such praise might attract the ‘Evil Eye’.
I am not suggesting we should hearken unto old superstitions, but behind some folklore traditions may lie a deposit folk wisdom. Never seem too proud of anything, including the status of your children.
Superiority
To tie a label to a child proclaiming “I was a chosen child” is to assign to the child – who is all unknowing – a status of implied superiority and greater entitlement than those who may not have been ‘chosen’.
Many of us came into this world unchosen. Many of us started out as pregnancies regarded as a pesky and unexpected nuisance; and yet many an unchosen child nonetheless became the apple of their mother’s (and father’s) eye.
Human life is not some consumerised product, to be subjected to ‘quality control’, whereby only those who pass the test of being ‘chosen’ may be regarded as admissible. Think of all the amazing individuals born into unpropitious circumstances – from Beethoven to Sean O’Casey – who have contributed great things to the world. By contrast, both Hitler and Stalin were highly-treasured ‘chosen’ children (coincidentally, both their mothers had suffered four miscarriages or infant deaths previous to their births).
This ‘chosen’ placard is also an insult to so many adopted children whose biological parents were not in a position to raise them. They were not ‘chosen’ pregnancies, but I have met so many adoptees who felt grateful for the life they have been blessed with.
When I was in my early 20s, I wrote to the Limerick novelist Kate O’Brien and she answered my letters courteously. She said, in one letter, that her life had had its ups and downs (she wasn’t well off in old age), but she added a memorable phrase: “We didn’t ask to be born,” she wrote, “but had we been consulted, how could we ever have refused?”
A much kinder, and wiser, attitude than the boast: “I was a chosen child.”
Illuminating the human condition
Anyone seeking to understand Alzheimer’s disease, or dementia, should try and see Florian Zeller’s play The Father, currently at the Gate Theatre in Dublin.
I’ve seen the play twice – once in London, once in New York – and it is one of the most powerful pieces of writing on this subject I have encountered. Its brilliance resides in the fact that it makes you comprehend what it feels like to develop Alzheimer’s: the story is told completely from the point of view of the afflicted person.
Art is surely great when it expands our illumination of a human condition, and it’s remarkable that the French author himself is only 37.