By implication, 'settling down,' in my mother's vernacular, means 'when are you going to present me with a grandchild?' and I am forced to announce, for the hundredth, the thousandth time, that it isn't likely to happen any time soon, if ever.
I am a failure in the eyes of my parents, and whenever I have time to consider it for any length of time, a failure is what I feel. Yet, as always, things are never so simple, if we set about establishing a chain of reasoning:
- I am a failure
- to fail means that a goal or target must have been set, which I did not reach
- to veer away from this target is to veer away from the life which has been set for me
- to have a life which others expect you to live is tantamount to religion
- as someone who long ago rejected religion, I can think it through and conclude that I no longer need to feel as though I am a failure.
The Catholic predicate is a simple one - have as many children as possible, no matter what the consequences. The greater glory of God is all that matters, even as millions are riddled with AIDS for lack of contraception, even as abortion is still a sin as it robs God of yet another life.
This is the trap into which my unthinking - not thoughtless - mother fell, after decades of having it repeated.
It is better to be with anyone, so long as the equals sign after your sum is followed by children. Not a Dawkinisian imperative, but a Vatican one.
Marry, or not, whichever is more condusive to the creation of other, new lives, else you are a failure. Having seen through this theistic ruse, I have not failed, I am now aware. I have neither failed nor succeeded, and nor can I ever, because there is no external standard from which I can be judged either way.
