What do I want?

Good food, good drink, to be warm in winter and not too hot in summer, to have moral, well-rounded and content children, to have a small circle of good friends who get my jokes, a devoted partner who can make me laugh even in my blackest moods, a vegetable garden and to figure out what makes humans, well, human. I want to have all this while living in an equitable society.

I’ve very nearly got them all. Australia is slowly getting there. I haven’t planted anything this year but planning to be raring to go for autumn and the 3yo is slowly getting the all important “Do unto others” maxim. It’s the penultimate one that’s going to be the corker. What makes humans human? What are humans anyway? What are we? WHO are we? What on earth are we for? and most importantly (for me anyway), how do we work?

I’ve done a science degree majoring in biological molecules, I’ve explored the world of plants, microbes, insects, reptiles and mammals and it still amazes me that something as complex as an ant could emerge from an exquisitely organised cluster of molecules let alone a thinking, feeling, acting human being capable of immense wonders, dire atrocities and love that makes my heart flip every time I encounter it.

When I crumble homemade compost through my fingers I wonder: how can we be made from essentially the same stuff as this? It is naught but luck that some of the carrots in our house turned into compost and some into human via hungry kiddie tummies. No wonder people invented a divine creator (apologies to those who don’t think the creator was an invention) - something to stop the wondering that could drive most men mad. Fortunately for me I’m not most men (I don’t envy them their genitalia to be honest and seriously, if there is a creator, I think they’ve got some explaining to do in that area) but the question is driving me mad. Not because I don’t like the wonder, but because (despite my husbands Herculean efforts) I get to spend so little time devoted to it.

Parents simply don’t get to swim in entrancing questions the way people can when they do not have caring commitments. And when the question is one of human consciousness, there’s a great deal of swimming needs to be done. So what do I want? I don’t want a Nanny, I like my children most of the time and they need their parent around. Maybe I’d like an extra 72 hours a week just for me. Yep, that’s what I want. A little speedy time capsule so I could nab an extra 72 hours while the others slept. I might age a little faster than my husband, I might use some of those extra hours for sleeping, who knows? The point is they would be just for me. Some guilt-free hours just for me, that’s what I really want.