I like to sing music in its original language. Call it bias, purism, snobbery; I picked it up from my first conductor, in high school. And it's not hard to agree, because even if you don't read the native language it's typically obvious that the English words aren't a translation, but a rewrite. For example, while I don't really read Latin, I am absolutely certain that "Christus surrexit hodie" does not mean "Rejoice in the Lord and sing" (if you're curious and don't have the language background, it's some variation on "Christ is risen today").

It just gets better and better. Although, there is some good news. And I'm glad about this also.

I've decided that underneath all my prevarication about wanting to have kids (okay, a kid--one is probably plenty) is a fairly straightforward desire to do so, and doubts to the contrary come from worries about my fitness to be a parent, and a persistent effort to not make up my mind about it, in a lame attempt to try and be happy with however my life turns out. Well, I would like to raise a child someday, so I'll go ahead and admit that to myself. No matter how my life turns out, I won't be happy with it unless I'm being honest with myself.

I don't have a logical reason for wanting kids, but the more I've thought about it the more convinced I am that you don't need one, and in fact maybe it doesn't exist. On paper it seems like an awful idea: our world is difficult, and going to get more difficult. The planet is getting more overpopulated, and the environment continues degrading, and on the horizon are changes on a scale to affect human evolution, like melting polar ice and the Yellowstone supervolcano (the latter not really being anyone's fault or anything we could change). That's a harsh legacy.

And yet.

I'm overanalyzing this, I realize. This is one of those things where most people don't think at all, and I go off and think too much. I can't apologize for that, because surely everyone would be better off if we all thought more about why we were having kids, but I can overdo it.

I can come up with all sorts of reasons, many amounting to the idea that I think I'd like to try and pass on what I've learned, because I think it's worthwhile and I think the world could use more strong, nice people...but the end of it all is that there's something about the idea of fatherhood that feels right, like aikido feels right. The feeling I get that guides me to what I want and what I should do. So I note that now, and file it away for a later time.

Sometime soon, it will be time to find my tribes again, to rejoin more strongly the families of former strangers I've found here.

Inner change tastes like chicken. Remember to drink lots of water.