The Future

"Am I big enough to know how small I am?" - Babyhead

I'm quite carefree on a day to day basis. I'm not one of life's great worriers. But, sometimes, something will set me off worrying, and I can lose days to the sort of thing which I have no hope of doing anything about. 

Often, the thing I worry about is The Future, which I have capitalised for dramatic effect. Quite a broad topic, and somewhat unavoidable, like the result of a sporting fixture you're hoping to watch the day after it actually happens.

This worrisome aspect of my character has been noticeably more, erm, noticeable since becoming a father. This, I suppose, is because I no longer have the luxury of being able to stop worrying at some point roughly fifty years into the future. I now have to worry for (I hope) at least eighty years. And that's if Cam doesn't do any procreation of his own. 

Part of the trouble with The Future is that there will almost certainly be people in it. People like me, people like you, people like George Osborne, people like Eric Schmidt, people like Wayne Rooney. Countless other people. Millions. Billions. Too many. Too many people milling around on this little rock; eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, sleeping, shagging, consuming, wasting, creating, destroying. 

Did you know, that if every human currently on Earth consumed its resources at the rate at which the average American consumes resources, we would require 3.7 Earths in order to not run out of stuff? Now, I've checked under the fridge (where everything I've lost eventually turns up) and there are no spare planets under there. Fortunately, we are not all Americans.

So, no problem, right?

Well, not according to this article I read yesterday: Humans 

See, it isn't just the consumption being done by existing humans we need to be concerned about. There's around 7 billion of us at the moment. Apparently we'd all physically fit on Zanzibar, although I doubt the quality of life would be up to much. But, as a species, we are DAMN GOOD at growing our population. 

Yep. High fives all round for our procreative prowess. 

As a result of our collective horizontal jogging efforts, we'll soon (within our children's lifetimes) be sharing the planet with 9,999,999,999 other humans. Hold on, is that enough digits? I'm not sure I can even count to ten billion, or if I'd have time to get there before I died. Anyway, yes. TEN BILLION people. 

So, in The Future, I just don't see that there's enough Earth to go around. Enough water. Enough food. Enough fuel. Enough space. Enough of those little paper umbrellas you used to get in cocktails. Enough spokey dokeys. Enough, honestly, of most things.

So I worry. I worry that Cam will grow up in a world where there is increasing competition for the resources we do have. That he will see massive unrest unfold around him as more and more people wake up to the idea that we can't go on as we do now. Most of all I worry that the answer to the problem of too many people does not lie in a change in how we consume, I worry that it lies in how many of us there are doing the consuming. I worry that there needs to be fewer of us, and that somewhere in The Future we will have to confront that. 

I worry that we are not big enough to know how small we are, and that we will wander headlong into a need for drastic action to reduce our number, and we'll be too busy thinking about how important we are to see it coming.

I hope, now I've written this, I can go back to not thinking about it for a while. I am a part of the problem.

Cam's War

Sometimes, when he cries, I wake with a jolt. As if I am Frankenstein's monster, my bed is the operating slab, and his cry is the immeasurably powerful lightning strike. Fast asleep to full alert in the 0.014 seconds it takes for the sound to travel from his mouth to my ear.

A fully alert brain doesn't translate to a fully alert body. Several full seconds pass before my limbs and joints can be convinced to join in the party. His lungs are now in full swing, gulping in air and converting it to pure anguish. The sound of being alone, of waking up to a world still so new to him that his brain needs to recalibrate every morning, but mostly the sound of doing battle.

His invisible enemies torment him through the day and through the night. They wriggle, they move, they prod and push, though they don't yet protrude. Dentin Soldiers: milk teeth. Waging war on our tiny boy, whose only defences are copious saliva, chewing on his own hands and those heart wrenching howls of agony.

By the time my recalcitrant hips have been coerced into action my wife is already up and soothing him, the soft shushing is designed to comfort, but to my ears also holds notes of concern and helplessness. What use are we to him? What relief can we give? All the quiet reassurances that he's okay mean nothing to him, or to the tiny incisors moving ever closer to eruption. We can not lull them to sleep any more than we can him. I stay in bed. We are zero help whether we are one or two.

Distraction proves impossible. He is lifted and embraced, held tight in my wife's arms and snuggled to her chest. Rocked and swayed. Regardless, the screams continue, the tears roll and leave their salty trace, the limbs thrash.

He comes into our bed, nestled between us to prevent the rolling over he has recently perfected. A moment's peace as his brain once again recalibrates to his new position, then the crying is back. Was it a moment or an hour? I'm not as alert as I thought. How long have I been asleep and allowing my wife to bear the brunt of this? Too long. Now it is my turn. I pick him up, offer him what I can: the sound of my voice, my finger to chew, my arms and chest to hit in frustration.

My tired brain is convinced he has filled his nappy. We return to his room and begin the changing process. There is no poo. But while I'm changing him from one clean nappy to another he is smiling. We play a little and all seems right for a few minutes. I sense a change which could mean this part of the war is over. I reinsert him in his 2.5 TOG cocoon and lay him back in his cot. Awake but calm I leave him. He is yawning. I am yawning.

Battle recommences within an hour. Feelings of pity and concern for him mix with a notion that we must be doing something wrong. Surely we ought to be able to help him? There is some trick we are missing and we are failing him by doing so. Whatever it is, we can't work it out. So he gets our best shot: 5ml of sugary analgesia poured into his gaping, angry mouth.

I'm given the go ahead to return to sleep. I need to be able to function to some degree when I go to work tomorrow. Today. In three hours. Doggedly, my wife continues to sit with him, singing a lullaby over and over. A statement of her love for him which carries through the air and sends me to sleep.

My battle is over for tonight.