Humans are Miracles

Humans are miracles

I want to share something that struck me as profound and touching and perhaps universally important. At any rate, I do think there is a lesson in it for young men, and women, in the United States in Gen Z. They are facing so many new challenges that are economic, psychological, and social. The thing I want to talk about here is how an unexpected pregnancy (especially in poorer families) is only seen as a mistake and a young man causing a pregnancy is a f— up.  No argument from me…on the practical side, it can be accurately seen that way. But the thing is, life goes on. What we make of it is partly a result of the story we tell ourselves about events in our lives.

I once worked as part of a team for a rural development project in the Republic of Niger in West Africa. While we were in Niamey, the capital, getting ready to go out on one of our monitoring trips, a young man who was a driver for the project announced that his wife would soon give birth. Salifou came in to work the next week and then joyfully announced that his wife had given birth. Immediately everyone congratulated him heartily. According to custom, Salifou then gave out candies to everyone in celebration, a modest version of the community-binding gift of food one would give at a baptism. Here’s what it made me think about:

• Nobody made fun of him because his giving was very modest and reflected his small income,
• Everybody treated him as though he were the first man in the world to help make a baby, it was as though he had performed a miracle.

 I know from experience that his young wife most likel had at least that congratulatory reaction and probably much more from their combined families and her neighbors. Women, too, in Niger, get celebratory gestures when they have a baby. What really struck me is how empowering and affirming these reactions are. Of course, in Niger as elsewhere, babies are born all the time.  Imagine that almost every time people are congratulated as though they have pulled off one of the earth’s great miracles!  But for me, the striking factor is this: it is a miracle.  Making and having a new human being is a miracle! In an intensely capitalistic and materialistic world, the human being becomes not much more than a cost factor, especially for poor folk. How often, for families in the United States, do people treat young men as though they have done something wonderful by helping to create another human life? What has become of the way we see human lives? How do we see children?  We will have to think of ways to help people not to become so discouraged, so traumatized and exhausted, when they have a baby, and to remember that a child is more than a threat of more bills. I am not speaking of the blustering male joking about how someone ‘hit the mark.’  I am speaking of actual engagement with the idea of community; of adulthood, and of parenting. If we are losing this, is there anything we can do about it? Or, are we so far gone, that under the current system, this is a lost cause? I do believe that this engagement does remain, on some levels, in some places. I acknowledge that this obtains in close religious communities. Also among more educated folk, in general, if social media is any indication. A baby is the accomplishment of two people, but as Khalil Gibran said, is of us but not from us, does not belong just to a couple. A new person comes with their own possibilities. A birth is a community and human event. I share this anecdote because it seems to me that we have forgotten, in the West, particularly in the United States, particularly within  communities that have high out-of-wedlock birth rates, that it is still a miracle. That a human being does have value. Remembering this makes me worry about how few African American humans live lives that allow for simple joys. Increasingly, most American humans of any origin are running like hamsters in a cage. Especially for this reason, this is not the time to despair but to make up our own stories about our lives that help us to move forward, as slaves and indentured servants and poor immigrants did earlier in the history of this country. By this I mean the joys of being a human being. In a larger sense, we are responsible for remembering the value of a human being.