#53

They say 'money makes the world go round'. 'They', are wrong. Love, lust, sex and the resulting offspring are what really what makes the world turn. Reproduction: it's the primary objective of just about every living thing on the entire planet. That's a fact. 'Reproduction?', sounds a bit cold and scientific doesn't it? Perhaps not something you want to think about too often in case it makes life seem less special, less romantic, or less miraculous. Your life is not a miracle... no... not just a miracle, it's a thousand miracles, because you yourself are the product of a thousand stories of 'girl meets boy' (romantic enough?) over the past million years that us humans, in one variety or another, have walked the earth. A thousand parents before, anxiously muddled through parenthood, battling against adversity: in times of famine feeding their child when they had none, hiding their child when marauders attacked, holding their child aloft when flood waters came, huddling their child close against fire, storm and the cold... and that child, in effect, now, turns out to be you, and if just one of those parents had not invested all that love and protection somewhere along the line, then you would simply not exist. Since you do exist, and since the business of continuing to exist takes up a lot of your time, then it is all too easy to neglect marveling at your sheer infinitesimal good fortune of being alive. Saying we've all beaten the odds to be here at all, would be a massive understatement.

And so, upon the good news that Marc has just become a Dad, I wish continuing good luck to his new son Mason and all the other new children across the globe as you take us funny old humans into the future.

As Buzz Lightyear would say: 'to infinity and beyond'.

And in fact, as an after-though, maybe we could think of a new name to replace the rather cold scientific term of 'reproduction'... maybe because all sorts of animals are caught-up in it maybe we could name it after some nice little common-all-garden animals, hmmm, maybe we could call it something like: "the birds and the bees"......