One reason, among many

This week's issue of The New Yorker featured a brief piece on Marnie Stern, a vigorous finger-tapping rock guitarist and singer (click here for a sample of her work) who debuted in 2007 with what the Times then called "this year's most exciting rock'n'roll album." (Although, to be fair, the online reviewer Piero Scaruffi was somewhat less impressed, putting it no. 44, two slots below an entry by Birchville Cat Motel, whoever they might be). In addition to some kudos from The New Yorker's Sasha Frere-Jones, Stern also got a glossy full-page photo, which carried a quote as a caption. "The idea of potential and possibility," Stern was cited as saying, "is the only thing that drives me to keep going with music."

Aye, cap'n: that's well put. And, in fact, seems reasonable enough to explain other motivations, in other fields. Why would Jerry Brown want a third term as governor of the economic moonscape that is California? I have to believe that on some level, he's spurred by the idea of potential and possibility. Why would Michael Jordan have decided to play for the lowly Wizards, with six titles and a place in Springfield already locked up? Potential, man, and possibility.

And what, I wonder, about parents? No doubt, we're driven to keep going - to keep changing those diapers; to keep dully pointing out red cars and green grass as though we were in a never-ending ESL class - by a range of pressures and rewards. Social expectations play a role - as I learned once when I was chided by a parking meter officer for leaving a sleeping Cleo in the car as I ran 20 feet into an adjacent Starbucks (mea culpa, mea culpa - and please note that your belated disappointment in me is only another example of the phenomenon I'm describing). But so too do the occasional peaks: the sight of Cleo playing with her grandparents, or laughing at the generous antics of cousins, over the Christmas holiday, is a sort of high-octane fuel that keeps this dad, at least, running.

Above all, though, I think that many of us are spurred to parent actively, or creatively, by the very ideas of potential and possibility. Indeed, on New Year's Eve a friend suggested that one compelling reason to have another child would be the possibility that they could solve the world's environmental problems. (True, but contrast the improbability of that lovely idea with the dull certainty that the child would inevitably produce roughly 50 tons of garbage). Or, rather more prosaically, as much as we love our children, we love seeing them grow, as well. And while we can control the direction of that growth to some extent, it's the realization that we can't actually fully control it that's truly exciting.