Random Desires?

Life builds on little things. Randomly at first, then directed, or at least guided by, some aspect of desire, which itself, is guided, at least in humans, by culturally reinforced genetic programming. Desire takes us someplace, which may be different from what our consciousness thought it had its eye on, so to speak.

Let’s put some flesh on those sentences.

My great-grandparents, the earliest generation for which I have even the least specific information, somehow met, in four pairs, and made kids. Two became my grandfathers, and two my grandmothers. I know my father’s mother had sisters, and that her parents were well enough off to get her sisters’ husbands started in business, and at least one of them got started a second time after the first endeavor failed. I guess I need to ask my dad about his dad’s siblings. I don’t remember ever hearing him talk about anyone else in his dad’s generation. As for his dad’s parents, I only know that my great grandfather was a mercury poisoned mad hatter, and that’s why my dad’s dad left Russia. My dad’s dad’s mother is a complete unknown, kindof like the mother of Abraham of the Bible.

My mother’s mother came from a big family. She was born in Scranton, PA. So I have seen photos of her and her parents. They, like my father’s mother’s parents, apparently were of some means. They were property owners soon after arriving in the USA as immigrants. Likewise, my mother’s father had a fairly large family, who had paved the way for his participation in what we now call chain migration. His relatives had a job waiting for him in the family grocery store. Eventually, he became a traveling salesman, kept company by his male and female German shepherds.

So there we have the first level of random events that ultimately led to the production of my grandparents, a necessary precondition for the eventual existence of yours truly.

Apparently, despite the existence at that time in Europe of matchmakers, I have been made to understand that both pairs of grandparents were desirous of each other. My father’s mother’s parents were apparently not too pleased with their daughter’s choice. That history wave continued to be the case, in a milder form for my mother’s mother’s feelings toward her daughter’s choice, and in full force for my mother’s feelings toward my selection. Therefore, the history wave of parental disapproval skipped from XXXX family (I don’t remember my father’s mother’s maiden name) to the Spiegel family (mother’s mother’s maiden name) where it stayed, despite my mother’s change of name on marriage.

So now we have demonstrated the move from random, or at least independent, or at least apparently independent, chains of events, being influenced and thence ultimately determined by, desire. In my father’s father’s case specifically, he was said to have fallen for Dora because “she and her sisters were considered “hot.”

Never having believed that I personally was hot, even when several boys and later men, told me that they found me to be in possession of the hotness commodity, I found it hard to believe that the grandmother for whom I am named was hot. I am to inherit the slightly colorized photo of her when my dad passes, unless he forgets to specify it in writing. In which case, I would have little hope, having become the black sheep of the family. In the photo of Dora, I do find her pretty.

Despite my belief in my lack of hotness, I still chose a mate, or allowed myself to be chosen, and despite my lifelong desire to remain free of children, nature’s pull and culture’s push resulted in my gaining offspring.

Had my dad not encouraged my interest in science, had I not decided to become an engineer, I would not have gotten the jobs at the steel mills, where I met Nick, who was a mobile equipment operator on my team when I, along with a Swedish woman metallurgist and two black men who had risen through the labor ranks into management, ran one of three shifts of steelworkers. Nick and I became friends, and we (I and spouse) began visiting Nick and his family. His daughter was “so cute,” that we began to question our desire for freedom from children. So it feels like, if it weren’t for Nick and Mary and their Nicole, I would have been able to achieve the Buddhist goal of getting off of the hamster wheel of karma or dharma or I would have been able to break what Jews call the chain of the generations.

By the way, I picked engineering as a career choice, because I desired to be with guys. Their interests seemed more compatible, regardless of my inability to experience their attraction to me.

Anyway, back to the subject. So consciously, I was heading for having a family with cute kids, and a desire to show how effective our well planned parenting experiment would be. But that brief window of desire was interrupted by the reality of having to provide for the offspring, and stick with their other parent, whose laziness became more oppressive as the basic tasks became more burdensome. Subconsciously, I guess I was going for increased compassion for my fellow humans. I experienced being trapped by the biological need to protect the offspring. I experienced the burden of having to earn a living, not just to support myself, but others. I experienced being a hypocrite, unable to rise above the walls of the small circle defining my social responsibilities, unable to speak out against things I knew were wrong. Well, that was my excuse. Hell, it’s still my excuse. But now I don’t have kids to directly support. Just myself, my ex, and the neighbors who mow my lawn, weed my garden, and plow my snow. There are still those who depend on my finances. Or at least enjoy them.

OK. 53 words in the original impersonal paragraph, versus 925+ (due to post posting edits!!) in the version adorned with specific details. Which was more interesting? Which easier to understand? If the second version was easier to understand the gist of, did the first shed light on the fact of the universality of the experience, despite potential complete separation of particular experiences?

Please let me know!!!

Use the comment feature below!