Hello child, welcome to life!

This will seem a strange and fearful place to you, no doubt, a jumble of shapes and colours at this stage which you won't have the knowledge or vocabulary to put a name to, nor the ocular capacity even to see clearly.

And to be truthful, you're not actually seeing things anyway, but imagining, the black box we call the brain in the darkness of your skull making up stories of what it thinks it sees from messages sent by your eyes, your ears, the surface of your skin, the tips of your fingers.

These tales aren't always correct. If you are wise you will learn, at some point, to stop a moment and question their veracity before accepting them.

But that skill is years away in your future. For now, you just need to breathe, stick as close to the person who feeds and gives you shelter as you can, relax and take it all in. It feels a scary place, true, but believe me you have arrived at a point in the planet's journey that is safer for humankind than it has ever been.

You should know that you are the product of several thousand years of the struggle, graft and tears of your ancestors. Some will have lived very short lives, enough only to procreate before they expired; others to have had lives that were long and eventful. Some of those ancestors will have been lucky, with plentiful food in their bellies and a sound roof over their heads; others not so fortunate, scrabbling day-to-day to find or grow or earn enough money to buy the nourishment needed to sustain themselves and raise their young, at least to an age when their young could look after themselves.

For the most part you're not likely to experience the level of struggle they endured. Be thankful for that, use the time this gives you to experience joy. It’s your duty, almost, to make the most of such happiness - if not for yourself, then in their stead. They worked hard to survive so you could be born; celebrate that hard work by living the best life you can possibly manage.

Alison Mott

(In the style of Kurt Vonnegut's 'Hello babies. Welcome to Earth', shared by Humanists UK on the anniversary of his birthday).

Photo by Omar Lopez on Unsplash