http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/hey-parents-leave-those-kids-alone/358631/

I suspect that beneath your offensively and vulgarly effeminate façade there may be a soul of sorts. Have you read widely in Boethius?”
“Who? Oh, heavens no. I never even read newspapers.”
“Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age,” Ignatius said solemnly. “Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books.”
“You’re fantastic.”
“I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he’s found himself. His morality is rather rigid, also. I rather respect Batman.

“The trouble with human beings is not really that they love themselves too much; they ought to love themselves more. The trouble is simply that they don’t love others enough” – Mary Midgley (one of our wisest living philosophers)

Mary is a mother of three and so much of what she writes about resonates with me–particularly her confidence in humanity, the emphasis she places on the importance of seeing the world from multiple (non-judgemental) perspectives and her concern that overspecialisation is a handicap to our human capacity for thought.

But one my favourite of all the things she said is: “I wrote no books until I was a good 50, and I’m jolly glad because I didn’t know what I thought before then.” 

At 94-years of age, Mary just published her 15th book, Are you an Illusion? (FT review here:http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/70476606-ae8e-11e3-aaa6-00144feab7de.html#axzz2woyHZyZV

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MORE from Luakabop

http://luakabop.com/photobio/williamonyeabor/

I ask you, my friends, not to condemn me entirely to the mill of mathematical calculations, and to allow me time for philosophical speculations, my only pleasures. – Johanes Kepler (1619)

 Children are like fresh globules of tantalizing rain;
 which spell bindingly descend in euphoric frenzy from 
fathomless carpets of glorious sky,
 Children are like innocuous tufts of cotton soaring 
ebulliently in handsome atmosphere; philandering in stupendous melody under carpets of gloriously blissful
 sunshine,
 Children are like the pristine rays of Omnipotent Sun; 
profoundly illuminating one and all; with their
 vibrantly intriguing imagery; alike, 
Children are like the fairies of irrefutable truth
 dancing in the celestial heavens; with their 
immaculately divine consciences boundless kilometers 
away; from the despicable gutter of lies,
 Children are like ecstatically redolent roses brazenly 
swaying in the afternoon winds; unfurling into
 majestic artistry and overwhelmingly tangy 
boisterousness; as each second speedily zipped by, 
Children are like fulminating springs of rhapsodically 
untamed jubilation which erupt from the inner most
 core of earth; incessantly blooming into a paradise of
 new found energy; an insatiable euphoria to propel
 forward in life,
 Children are like united colors of the vivaciously 
radiant rainbow; embracing each other in compassionate 
cradles of humanity; entirely oblivious to the satanic
 vagaries of caste; creed; religion and spurious color,
 Children are like the resplendently milky beams of the
 innocent Moon; perennially twinkling in the 
unparalleled exuberance of discovery; indefatigably 
exploring all bountiful happiness so fantastically 
laden upon this colossal planet,
 Children are like voluptuously nimble blades of dew drop coated grass; profusely ringing in the whole some
 merriment of symbiotic existence; whistling past the
 meadows of inexplicably ghastly sorrow; with
 Omnipotent beauty in their tiny souls,
 Children are like scintillatingly majestic eagles 
soaring royally through the silken clouds;
 uninhibitedly kissing all goodness that confronted
 them in their way; on every step that they poignantly tread, 
Children are like angels of relentlessly philanthropic 
benevolence; donating even the most priceless of their
 possession; to their comrades in agonizing pain,
 Children are like the sparkle of seductively ethereal
 dawn; deluging every disastrously bereaved household;
 with the ingratiatingly timeless essence of joyously 
beautiful existence, Children are like steps leading to the sacrosanct 
Creator; unassailably fortifying your persona to face
 the deadliest of evil; as you clambered each foot 
forward,
 Children are like rambunctiously revered and bushy 
squirrels up in the foliated trees; eternally 
unfolding into insurmountable enthusiasm; leaping
 fleet- footedly to metamorphose beleaguered earth once
 again into an Omniscient paradise,
 Children are like unfathomable treasure hoves of
 captivating honey; oozing the ultimate sweetness of 
godly creation; with the incredulous ardor in their
 heavenly voice,
 Children are like charms of everlasting luck;
 magically transforming your despairingly deplorable
 survival; into a life replete with profusely endearing
 graciousness,
 Children are like invincibly boundless mountains of 
faith; instilling Herculean courage in all those
 miserably dwindling; by just the unprecedented fervor
 of brilliant optimism; lingering enchantingly in the
 whites of their eyes,
 Children are like petals of Omnipresent prosperity;
 ubiquitously diffusing the spirit of happiness and
 immortal humanity; to every penuriously ailing entity on the trajectory of this endlessly glittering planet,
 And Children are like the supremely divine aura of
 Godhead; granting every benign desire in your heart to
 be perpetually true; the instant you held their
 beaming palms to frolic with them in the gardens of;
 unconquerable togetherness….

– Nikhil Parekh, Ahmedabad, India

(Conversation between Philomena and Katarina, both age 6)

After over-hearing this conversation I began making it a point to smother my husband with kisses on the lips in front of the children. I was on a mission to prove Katarina wrong. Married people do kiss, dammit.  Not only do they kiss but they also have great sex—lots of sex. In fact, once you have children, sex just gets better and better—the bonds become stronger, given all the stimulating and complex challenges parents face together, and emotional connections become exponentially more intense. Love, passion and family-life go hand in hand.

I wish this were always true. But the reality is I too rarely catch a glimpse of married people kissing on the lips. Maybe that’s because I live in London. Perhaps if I lived in Buenos Aires, I’d see married people making out on every park bench. All I know is that most of my friends with children—and these are pretty multi-cultural friends who are spread across a number of continents tell me a similar story: they rarely have the time or energy for proper kissing.

A survey carried out by the British Heart Association revealed that 20% of married couples can go a week without kissing—did that mean that 80% of couples kiss everyday? If that were true I would let 6-year-old-Katarina know immediately. I do wish someone would carry out that study because I desperately want to know more about kissing—not the quick, 1950s-style-honey-I’m-home kind of peck, and not the slightly embarrassing tongue-swishing kind either—I want to know about those sweet, in-between kisses, the ones that last 3-5 seconds, the ones that force you to slow down just a bit, just enough to pause and re-connect.

One day I tried to keep track of how many times I kissed my children relative to my husband—it was a very silly exercise. I lost track very quickly as my girls receive kisses every few minutes–not only on their lips, but their cheeks, forehead, top of head, hands, belly and feet– they are constantly smothered in affection. In contrast, I calculated an average of two pecks and one kiss a day with my husband—the have-a-great-day-departure-peck in the morning and the honey-I’m-home-peck in the early evening. The honey-I’m-home-peck occurs after rolling around on the floor with the children in a frenzy of giggling and kisses, which is of course a beautiful site to see, but the contrast between their intimacy, their lightness in being, their capacity to make space to connect and our own capacity to do so becomes instantly apparent. I hate pecks—I tell my husband all the time, if you’re going to peck me, peck me on the cheek, not the lips—my lips are reserved only for kissing. It’s not always easy to remember these things.

It is extraordinary how much our children value kissing–not the kisses they receive but the kissing they observe.

Video Luna’s take on kissing: https://vimeo.com/85147626