How reality excelled even my wildest imaginings (Article)

By Stanley Collymore

As a logical exposition it was effectively an abstract notion: merely a small part of my growing up experiences and in numerous ways not all that different, if at all, I would have anticipated from the expectation of many other heterosexual persons who recurrently day dream about them having children of their own and in the customary situation of those living in the United Kingdom rarely, but not wholly impossibly so, even choosing to get married first, abortion however always being a customary change of mind option for them, before they randomly opt to conceive and subsequently give birth to the offspring they claim and also convince themselves they truly coveted.

Yet here I am, a very welcoming, eventually as it happened, and a consummately living reality of that previously hypothesized ambition but now the distinctly physical outcome of what, in both adult and marital terms, I would consciously become.

A parent me, in this ensuing process, and no less so a truly fortunate, honoured and divinely blessed father to an absolutely gorgeous daughter and, by any rational definition, a breathtakingly handsome son.

But in spite of all this nothing in this specific and phenomenal process can remotely compare with the actions and personal involvement of my personal partner and loving wife to whom I shall always eternally be grateful for your massive, unselfish and ongoing assistance as well as the gargantuan and tremendously beneficial contribution that from the very beginning of our relationship and progressively throughout it as partner and spouse you’ve always made and selflessly continue to do so in my life.

If randomly a number of people were to be asked why they or others who have them had children or contemplated having them there would be a diversity of responses to that question ranging from the terse and impolite what business is it of yours what other people do with their lives to the obvious look of amazement on the respondents’ faces coupled with the remark of why shouldn’t they? It’s a free country, isn’t it?

But pressed on this specific subject matter and additionally asked to do so regardless of the clear repercussion of them doing so, I’ll wager a thousand pounds to a penny that the responses to that question would be more numerous in number than they are grains of sand on an idyllic Barbadian or other Caribbean beach. And the reason is quite simple.

For although most people feel quite strongly that having children is a personal choice for the individuals concerned and in any country that honestly or even sanctimoniously boasts of being a democracy that state of affairs ought to inviolately remain so with neither political, religious, economic or other social diktats determining who should be the chosen and privileged ones to have children, when they can do so and how many they ought to be permitted to have, there is nevertheless among these same groups of people a very pronounced disgust at, as well as an understandable antipathy towards those who having exercised their individual right to have kids not only have them for what’s unquestionably blatantly asinine and inappropriately sickening reasons but also proceed and even murderously inflict some of the noticeably most notoriously damning atrocities on their offspring who, to put it bluntly, didn’t ask to be born.

All-encompassing and profoundly psychological traumas that those who survive these kinds of atrocities inflicted on them not uncommonly and often invariably silently and non-supportively from others are psychologically forced to endure for the rest of their life. A state of affairs that is routinely induced in them and where they either consciously decide not to have children of their own or else in turn become themselves abusing parents, and in a situation which not only then underpins itself but more often than not takes several generations subsequently to actually break and eventually destroy the dreadful legacy of harm and devastation that both intuitively and intentionally have been caused.

And while I don’t personally subscribe to the notion, nor will I ever do so, that other peoples’ diktats should form and determine the criteria of who among the rest of us should have kids and furthermore the circumstances or the eligibility for granting such “concessions” to them, I’m nevertheless rather perplexed and have been for some considerable time over one particular aspect of child-begetting and the resultant rearing of children that few among our 65 millions of citizens throughout Britain seem not to have a handle on and consequently, because of utterly purblind ignorance on the part of most of them, do absolutely nothing about!

And isn’t it absolutely amazing and completely pathetic at the same time that across the whole of the United Kingdom while, for instance, you can’t lawfully drive a car or other motor vehicle regardless of how competent you are at doing so unless you’ve had instructive driving lessons and subsequently passed and are in possession of a valid Ministry of Transport certificate of competence to do so, in other words a driver’s licence – and quite rightly too I say – whereupon you’re then entitled to at will if you so desire wreak road-rage and other malevolent havocs on our highways if you care to; or come to that own a television even if you don’t watch the BBC or care to do so without having paid for and acquired the requisite television licence, anyone, including underage British school children, can none the less have sex, conceive or impregnate someone of the female gender and blithely have children in the process. And no one, and quite ignorantly so it seems gives a damn or shows any concern as regards tutoring not only our very immature youngsters but many exceedingly irresponsible adults as well about the possible and damaging consequences not only for them but also our entire nation as well.

I’m not talking about indoctrination or any other kind of coercion, nor would I ever in a million light years stupidly and unconscionably advocate any such thing. Instead, what I’m sincerely, sensibly, straightforwardly and intelligently advocating as well as proactively and practicably calling for is a universally state promoted and subsidized, as well as a decidedly competent and professionally administered, nationally rolled out and completely financially paid for from our general taxation, all-inclusive, completely free to everyone, non-political, non-religious but in essence an essentially secular, minus every trace of dogmatic exclusivism, well-informed and a constructively discursive approach to living one’s life, choosing to have a family or not to do so without any attendant opprobrium, antagonism, hostile criticism or disdain for making one’s own and well-informed decision on such matters.

A win-win situation is how I see it. For if the state can idiotically spend billions of pounds, dollars, Euros or whatever currency they choose to use on pointless and destructive wars how about diverting a mere fraction of those enormous sums of money into a project whose current and long-term consequences can only be beneficial for the entire nation as a whole. Since a truly confident, well-informed and psychologically empowered, as apart from a thoroughly manipulated and mentally abused, public will naturally choose politicians and public officials whose goals and concerns are in the best interests of the people and country they’re actually elected to represent, as distinct from what is presently the status quo. And just think too of the overall positive outcomes not only nationally also globally.

So this article and the attendant poem: “How reality excelled even my wildest imaginings” is for all of you who’ve been there, done it, experienced all the trials and tribulations cast in your way and got the T-Shirt to show it! (Smile). As well as those of you who instinctively feel that there’s an infinitely better way to have and raise children, but even so haven’t a clue how best to go about it.