Babies are warm, cuddly, and delightful. And they can be terrorizing, especially for new parents, for whom every moment of a twenty-four hour day presents a new learning frontier: “What do I? When do I? How do I? Where do I? Why do I?”
The counsel I gave myself then, and have since given others, is to simply do the one necessary thing immediately before you. Check the butt, change the diaper. Because every baby’s body works sort of the same. They eat, they sleep, they pee, they poop.
But, of course, babies are not automobiles. They need more than oil changes or diaper changes. Humans are a complex amalgamation of genetics, environment, opportunities and many other components, including Choice.
The woman I photographed transported one, two, three, four, five babies. I don’t know why or where she was taking them. But certainly each child was unique, and partially formed from infancy onward through their own Choice and consequence—to rebel, to obey, to comply, to tantrum.
Beyond infancy, the power of Choice plays an ever-growing part of our lives—our friends, attitudes, our values. By the time of adulthood, the power and the outcome of our choices can be gratifying or overwhelming—our faith, our career, our spouse. Many choices prove to be exceptional; others, disastrous. Some choices we want to mulligan, golfing slang for a “do-over.”
But the way to our future is far from re-living the past. We are given only one way out—one way to move forward. And that is by making even more choices—mature, forward-thinking and consequence-embracing choices, even in the light of some spectacularly poor ones in the past.
We all share the same human condition. To be human is to have one butt, but many choices.