Life is a Gift

Just last Tuesday, I had my twenty-fifth birthday, and next Tuesday is my mother’s birthday (I’m not telling you her age, though). Realizing that I’m now a quarter-century old has given me cause to reflect on my life. I’ve written before about the importance of gratitude – the importance of thanking God for all the wonderful things in your life. I’ve also written about the specific things I’ve been grateful for, like my mother, my father, my little brother, my dear departed Nanny, my other set of grandparents, my dog, my country and the troops who serve it, and even God Himself.

But of all these things, being alive is the best thing to grateful for. Without life, you cannot experience any other good thing. How can you enjoy good food if you aren’t alive? How can you speak with friends if you aren’t alive? How can you read books without being alive? How can you have a good life if you don’t have a life? That’s why, of all the things you should feel grateful for, the fact that you’re alive should be top among them.

I do not deny that there are people whose lives are unfortunate and full of hardship. But even in such a life, there can be redeeming elements – no person’s life, no matter how hard, is deprived of goodness. One can find the simple pleasures of a good meal or music while impoverished. One can find the chance for comradery and glory in the bleakest of battlefields. And no matter what your life circumstances are, God is watching, and He will reward you for your virtue in the afterlife.

I could focus on the bad part of my life – I do despair sometimes that I don’t have as steady employment as I’d like. I dislike not being able to live up to the standards I set for myself, both in this blog and elsewhere. I could focus on how I have autism and am thus unable to understand others as well as I might have otherwise. I could despair at all the poor choices I set out for myself. I could also attack the society around me for its numerous flaws and tendencies. But those things are pittance next to the overwhelmingly positive things in my life. If I were to moan and groan about my lot in life, what kind of person would that make me?

It’s thoughts like this that make me grateful for having been born. Despite its flaws, I do enjoy my life – perhaps too much! Even if I’m no Pollyanna, I try my best to embody the ideal of joie de vivre. Part of growing up means being able to take the good and the bad while remaining fundamentally joyful and appreciative of others. Someone who occupies his time concocting ever more recherché reasons for badmouthing his society and forebears is not mature. Cynicism is the hallmark of the narcissistic adolescent, not the world-weary adult.

One common form of cynicism is anti-natalism, the belief that procreation is immoral because of the unavoidable suffering one must endure in life. “Human existence is totally pointless,” says anti-natalist Raphael Samuel as he sues his parents for giving birth to him. Though he admits that he has a good life and is (apparently) close to his parents, he wants to scare parents all over the world into not having children.

When I look at such people, I can only shake my head. I can never understand why someone would be such an ungracious, spoiled brat. It’d be one thing if you were an impoverished wretch living in the third world. It’d be one thing if you were suffering from depression and were constantly being told by everything around you that your life was worthless. Such people deserve our sympathy and our prayers. But many of these anti-natalists live comfortable, middle-class lives. If they are miserable, if they feel that life is so terrible, then that is their fault. These people cannot see the goodness that outweighs and redeems this world’s suffering. These people do not see the inherent value of life.

Philosophers like David Benatar argue that humans generally do not properly evaluate the squalor of their condition. People who are happy with their lives are small-minded and ignorant of the wider suffering in the world. But what justifies such arrogant pessimism? Benatar claims that since not living means not suffering, it is superior to living. But as I pointed out before, life is necessary for all the good things too. And what of the people who courageously endure things like disease, abuse, or personal tragedy? Will the anti-natalist spit on this bravery as something delusional?

What does the increasing popularity of anti-natalism say about our society? Well, for my money, it indicates points to the fact that people equate a pleasurable life with a life well-lived and a painful life with a terrible one. This is the philosophy known as hedonism. But pain and pleasure must presuppose something greater than themselves. Pleasure is a biological signal that the organism fulfilled some desire, and pain is a biological signal that the organism experienced some harm. What makes pleasure a good and pain bad is that they have the greater purpose of preserving the organism in question. They do not give the organism’s life meaning. Rather, life’s intrinsic goodness gives pleasure and pain meaning.

The solution is very easy: be grateful. Thank God for all the good in your life and never take it for granted. I hope that, now that I’m twenty-five, I can be a bit more mature and spread this message to others. Don’t let people steal your joy. Life’s hard enough without it.