Life of despair with an unwanted child

I have a number of things to say about the development of painless civilization, but anyway, let us go back to the concept of “preventive reduction of pain” here. The biggest problem that comes from the preventive reduction of pain is that it makes us lose sight of the possibility of transforming the basic structure of our ways of thinking and being. Let us imagine the case of a disabled fetus. By developing prenatal screening systems, the probability of having disabled babies will decrease. This may be good news for those who want healthy babies; however, we have to take a closer look at the other side of this issue.

A friend of mine once told me the following story. A man, a close friend of hers, wished to have a cute healthy baby, but when his baby was born, he found it severely disabled. He was shocked. He despaired of the future of his baby and himself. The master plan for his life collapsed. He cared for his child but lost any hope for his future. However, after going through some years of experience of rearing his disabled baby, he suddenly realized that he had escaped despair somewhere along the line. It was a very strange feeling for him. While caring for his child still remained a burden, it was no longer despair. The reason for this was that his basic framework, including his way of thinking, feeling, and being, had been profoundly transformed. This transformation came about because of his encounter with the “unwanted” child, and his continuing care for the child. After experiencing this transformation, he started to feel that his life was not one of despair; hence, he never wanted to go back to life before the birth of the child, because his child taught him many precious truths of life that he had never known before. He finally gained self-affirmation of his life living with his disabled child.

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Painless Civilization and Fundamental Sense of Security
(2005)
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