The Clean and Empty Stable

I've been working from home since Christmas, though I'm going back to the office next week. Call me old fashioned, but I'm not into the 100% remote thing. I need some balance; thankfully I have a 3/2 schedule (3 days in, 2 days remote) which is the sweet spot, in my opinion. Gets me out of the house and also gives me some flexibility on my WFH days. Of course, working remotely has its perks but is not without its challenges, especially when kids are young and can be wild and crazy when you have meetings and things. The house is also a mess and hard to keep clean consistently.

Still, I can't fathom at this point in my life the mentality of those DINKs that have been in the news a lot--Dual Income, No Kids (typically Millennials) who choose intentional sterility and financial leveraging over any kind of inconvenience children may bring into their lives. A true short-sighted and self-centered poverty and social contagion that has the aura of health and wealth. Reminds me of the proverb: “Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but increase comes by the strength of an ox.” (Prov 14:4). Exhibit A, your Honor, and Exhibit B. I'm not gagging, you're gagging.

The silence when the kids leave the house with my wife is a nice little respite sometimes; but after an hour or so, the silent noise of emptiness begins to crescendo. On the flip side, when I am downstairs working and I hear the kids upstairs with their mom all piled on the bed laughing and talking--it's a sweet white noise to know there is life in this house, the currency of family. I try to soak it in, hold on to it as a cached memory for the times in our future when it will get quiet, empty, and yes, a little lonely. 

Sure, it gets crazy at times now. We may have more money in our checking account if we had forgone them kids. But the cutting, icy burn of that emptiness when you have prioritized things over people I imagine would catch up to you. No wonder we are such a lonely society. 

Here's the truth: you can never really "afford" kids and while I can sympathize with these Millennials who are finding it hard to live in the current economy, I also suspect that even if all the economic factors were in their favor, many would still choose not to have children, or limit them. Because we are an anti-life society of consumers. Not just here in the U.S., but globally. 

These DINKs are supposedly living their best life. Contraception, of course, has made this familial derth possible; a harbinger of the kind of dystopian future that we are reaping with our rejection of the natural and moral law of fruitfulness and right order and self-deference. The DINKs seem to have it all. Peace and quiet. A clean house. Complete autonomy. A perfectly planned life. 

What a pity, what a poverty, to never hear that song of children playing upstairs, of a home filled with messy life and expensive laughter and costly love. "As the sound of the playgrounds faded," she said, "the despair set in. Very odd what happens in a world without children's voices."