By Jonathan Kass
You are programmed to want children. You’re past thirty now and the cajoling from your genes is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Do it, they wheedle. Everyone likes you. The world needs more people just like you.
That may be true, you think. You have always been a sucker for flattery. You remember the other day when you dropped a glass and slowed its fall with your foot. Neither the glass nor your foot broke, and your wife seemed mildly impressed. Maybe I should have kids. You begin to like the idea. There are way worse people than me doing it.
Suddenly, a whisper from your shoulder — Psst. It’s your Existential Guilt, wearing Father Time robes and a doomsday clock necklace, the minute hand directed nearly upward. Here is the embodiment of your apprehension. Here is the misanthropic revulsion that strengthens every time you read the news. He looks at you with the face your mother used to make: not mad, just disappointed.