My story is one that had to be told. It is a story about how I believed my actions and weakness had ruined everything. A story ultimately about rules – but also lies, danger, sacrifice, destiny, and, of course, love. My story, and the stories of those around me, is a warning.
I had often marvelled at the effortless ignorance with which people conducted their lives. Always striving to achieve bigger and better, or to have more. It was the endless cycle of humanity, and all the people on earth craved it.
Once they had known and tasted what pleasures and rewards were on offer, all had wanted it. Always striving, always hoping. The funny thing is, people see hope as something good, something to hang their hats on. But it isn't. Hope is a curse. It is hope that drives people to live unfulfilled lives, work harder, and neglect their loved ones in the name of seeking a better future.
All of human life is governed by rules. Rules about how to conduct appropriate relationships, rules of law, rules of nature, rules of science. But the thing about rules is that it is in people's nature to test them and to bend them. To seek ways of manipulating them to suit whatever they really want to do.
The human brain is built to ask questions and to probe for answers. It is built for curiosity. The technological advances of the last 100 years have been astounding. People have gone to the moon in a space rocket, and satellites orbit the earth. More mundanely, but just as amazing to old eyes, is that most people have cars that can make a journey, that would once have taken weeks or even months, in only a few hours.
Couples who would have once been childless can now, through scientific advances, have children cultivated in a petri dish and implanted directly into the woman's womb. Genetic disorders can be identified and removed before the cells are implanted into the womb to ensure the baby is healthy, and even the baby's sex can be manipulated to the preference of the new parents. Of course, ethically most countries do not condone that practice, but if one has enough money today, the rules don't seem to apply in the same way.
Diseases that had once ravaged the known world are now reduced to treatable and curable illnesses, and immunization has allowed the world's population to explode by dramatically reducing infant mortality.
Social advances are just as astonishing. Only fifty years ago, living with your partner or having a baby out of wedlock would have been shameful, lustful, and attracted a severe social stigma. But, like everything else, the changing times have forced people to realize that the traditional family structure, that was once so essential to the stability and wellbeing of children, is no longer essential. There are many women who earn more than their partners, for instance, and so the caring role is reversed and there are many people, both men and women, who bring children up on their own, choosing to be independent, without the constriction of having to conform to the ideal of the traditional family.
Craving more and wanting better is intrinsically woven into the human psyche. Who has not super-sized their favourite fast food or coveted their neighbour's new car?
And of course there is divorce, the method of ridding yourself of a no longer wanted or unloved partner to be replaced by a newer, younger, less demanding or wealthier version. Ridding yourself of a partner with whom you had once promised to share your life, and vowed to protect forever.
Living by the rules and accepting who you are no longer applies to modern life, so the old rules have been discarded and news ones have been made. But the problem is, in the name of progress, people were so interested in whether they could do something that they never asked if they should.
Of course the blame for everything that happened to us, and everything that has happened subsequently, was laid at my feet. And hers. We naively thought we were masters of our own destiny, that we had an informed choice. We wanted to push our boundaries; we were curious enough to bend and break the rules. But we were not to know what damage we would cause, or the chain of events that would follow our actions.