What a beautiful and saddening thought, the children of imaginary conception.
Sciencebird wrote: Rumi, the sufi mystic poet, wrote a poem saying whenever a man and woman become lovers, a child is born, even if actual conception doesn't take place. The union of a man and woman is still an act of creation, whether in a one night stand or a marriage.
Abortion is an action that makes clear the idea of unfulfilled potential. There is conception: the egg and sperm unite. The gametes (the egg and sperm) fuse; the chromosones combine, and meiosis results in a random separation of the genes of each parent. At this point, there exists a unique genetic combination that will never be repeated. That is something tangible that one might be able to mourn at the goodbye of an embryo.
Yet every sexual encounter between penis and vagina has such potential. In a parallel to the abortion debate of when life begins, why can't one mourn the lost possibilities of pre-meiosis? Why must one only mourn the post-meiotic possibilities? Perhaps this is why the church and other entities and individuals argue against all forms of birth control.
However, there is also beauty in that potential. For every lost potential, we gain the possibilties of dreams.
2 comments:
I never thought of Rumi's statement as "imaginary conception". Rather, I thought the 'child stayed with each person, a kind of mark. When you visited me, we had a massage, and my therapist told me that you could change things about yourself through your body, mind, or soul. He was rather dour, and didn't have a theory worked out, but I took it to mean that someone can enter your heart or affect you in other ways through physical contact, so be careful, who you initiate such contact with. But I've thought the resulting child would perhaps be a new perspective, or a sense of love or regret, or a dangerous obsession.
Yes. The child is a metaphor. The imaginary conception is a metaphor. What is conceived is not a child, but the potential for life is a powerful thing, and can result in changes in other ways.
I agree, also, that you could change things about yourself through your body, mind, or soul. Various forms of physical, mental, or soulful contact result in various degrees of change, and various "children" of these interactions.
I love how you connect Rumi's poem to your therapist's barely formed idea, and finally to real life results.
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