Be fruitful and multiply

Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground. Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.”

Be fruitful in the way we multiply happiness for our loves. It just takes two loves to multiply, two red cherries to grow together, and it will blossom into a new passionate love, and a beautiful product of two. I hope it will come to fruition for you and your families, I hope a new life born out of love will bear fruit. We have a mandate, to grow the truth, beauty, and goodness of the world through multiplication of love. Be fruitful, and multiply…

Not everyone bears fruit, not everybody can do multiplication. You might have guessed that this is a metaphor. I will try to bring it to fruition…

You work 40+ hours a week, you take care of your wife or husband, and three kids, three crazy wild kids. You put a roof over their head, you give them tasty food to eat, you have enough money to buy toys and nice clothes for your children. And you forsake your own wants and desires, to save your hard-earned money so that your children can get a good education and live a happy life.

You might be wondering, “What am I supposed to do about the conditions of the world? I’m just barely treading water for my family.”

My response: you are doing just fine. If you raise those kids to be great persons you will have saved the world, and your little fruits will be ripe for new challenges and conditions that are even greater in complexity.

I only ask that you recognize that there are other fathers or mothers out there, who do not have as many resources and without them they are not able to give what they would like to give to their children and partners.

Please consider offering a fraction of your hard-earned money to support others, and if you don’t that is perfectly understandable. I will say that if you are Christian you might want to plumb the depths of your spirit and ask what the ethical choice should be, to give or to keep. I know you’ll make the right choice.

What about a pineapple?

This is a prickly fruit that stands alone. Be fruitful and serve others. Forego the institution of marriage, and instead throw yourself into a general love for the communities of people who mean the most to you. This is a sacred path even if it is not considered Holy by some.

For many, it is not a concerted effort to avoid romantic relationships. Rather it is making oneself sparse because they are too busy, there is too much to do, it is a luxury that cannot be indulged in.

Pineapples may be prickly and lonesome, deterring other people from getting in, but it is my favorite fruit because I am one.

And finally, there is the coming together of all of us, all of us as an array of the seeds of a fruit that belongs in a crystal bowl that we can call Mother Earth.

For all the mothers out there, you saved the world by bringing that baby up. If you rear a child to become an excellent human being we will come together and make a new world; in this way we will ensure that history will never stop, we will teach our children to never stop doing good and helping everyone reach the good life.

Everyone likes to see their work bear fruit. Whether it is a child, a job, or a relationship, we want to be rewarded for our efforts, and esteemed for what we put into it. Without feedback we quickly grow dissatisfied and it takes incredible energy to keep going when we don’t know if it is going.

I can testify to that.

I am filled with meaning most of the time. I feel like it was all worth it, and it will continue to be worth it if I continue to try. But other times, I lose hope and faith in myself and I feel like a rotten fruit that no one would ever want to take even a bite of and definitely not likely to pluck from a bush.

I will be honest, sometimes I feel like a fake. Sometimes I feel like it is time to carry me away with the rest of the harvest for processing into a simple gray meaningless seed.

I don’t think I can multiply in any fashion, I certainly would not want to multiply myself, and I don’t think I am fruitful in any sense.

I don’t know, but I imagine some people feel the same way. Be fruitful and multiply ~ easier said than done, better not to be fruitful, better not to multiply. For me and perhaps for you, this piece of advice from the Bible does not correspond to our reality. The reality on the ground is that romance is just one way of adding meaning to your life.

We put an incredible amount of pressure to force people into spending their lives locked together with another person. It is not true that this is the only way of existing in our society. There is no shame in not having sex, no shame in not having a ‘soul mate’, no shame in not having kids, no shame in not getting old with someone. There is too much at stake to invest all our social energy into fruit.

You might find that a solitary existence, in the sense of not having one single partner to wholly rely on, is more rewarding than a family. No one wants to admit this, not even to oneself, but children are nightmares, and no one says this, but there are some serious misgivings about deciding to have that third child, much less the first one. You might find that a parent of two is envious of you for the freedom your lifestyle affords.

Personally, I miss the touch of a loved one. I will never know what it is to hold your child in all their vulnerable love for you. That must be nice. But I can hug my nephew of 11 years, and I can guess what it must feel like.

There’s a lot of genetic stuff that motivates us to bond together with a mate and produce offspring. That is genetically programmed, that is natural. But natural is not always good, that is the naturalist fallacy…just because it is natural, does not mean it’s good. There’s a lot of happiness invested in going along with nature, but we can also outsmart it and decide for ourselves what will really make us happy.

Is the purpose of your life making sure that your children will grow up to be great people, going beyond what you dreamt of for yourself? Will you decide to fulfill your own dreams, or decide to pass on the torch to your son or daughter, so they will accomplish what you did not.

To all those single ladies, don’t worry about putting a ring on it. May your dreams be fruitful and may your contribution to the world multiply with every single seed you grow.