While the female seahorse grows a lot of eggs and spends a lot of her energy to prepare them with food, after mating it is the dad, the male seahorse, who takes the fertilized eggs in his belly, carries on the pregnancy and eventually gives birth to their offspring. This species has an interesting way to share the load of parenthood.
Each pregnancy can carry even a thousand eggs. After birth, they are ready to go and essentially on their own. Only about 5 of the thousands survive, because they are too tiny to find suitable food, and many obviously become food themselves – for other animals.
These parents are really ‘in flow’ and take it as a fact of life. Even only 24 hours after having given birth, daddy seahorse can get pregnant again.
They have to count on quantity, to survive. Even this way, they are endangered.
We, on the other hand, made a ton of progress to reduce our own infant mortality rates, which is a good thing, but then we spend so much time indoctrinating and conditioning our kids to become sophisticated idiots, that it makes me wonder whether we are really so much more evolved, as we think.
Don’t take me too literally: of course I am NOT saying we should make lots of kids, abandon them, and move on!
But there is a certain wisdom in ‘letting go’ – at least – of the too many expectations that most parents tend to have for their offspring. You don’t want to impose your views or those of society onto your kids. They don’t need to do soccer, baseball, piano lessons, get the best grades in school, go to college… ‘Everybody does that way’ is not a good reason for keep doing stupid stuff the same old way. Not everybody does things the same way. Kids come with new fresh ideas all the times. Listen to their wisdom. Learn from them. Set boundaries and teach them respect, of course, but most of all teach them to think with their own head and feel with their own heart. You want your kids to develop their own individuality and learn skills that they like, at their pace. For that you do need to give them space, not constrain them in the same stupid rules and assumptions that you already felt constrained in yourself. Do not force them into things, but also do not over-protect them!
Most kids of my daughter’s age (she’s seven) are not allowed to do anything in the kitchen on their own, because their parents are afraid they might hurt themselves, or because they are overly concerned they’ll make something dirty (big deal).
What more can we learn from the seahorse about trusting life?
I am meditating on this question and writing this post, while I eat one of the ‘beschuit’ (dutch rusk) with jam that my daughter prepared for me and my wife, as a Monday morning surprise breakfast.
Children might not choose their parents (if you follow ‘mainstream’ beliefs; there’s a whole other school of thought which says each soul actually chooses the family to be born in…) but as adults definitely we have the choice of choosing for ourselves who do we hang around with, who do we get influenced by and, consequently, how do we live our lives: do we constrain ourselves to conform to other people’s beliefs that we have not vetted for ourselves yet? We need to evolve and grow at our own pace – not someone else’s agenda. As humans, we need to make our own choices, in order to feel alive and give our lives meaning.
* To fully understand how the energy of this period can influence and affect you on a personal level, book a one-on-one card reading or consultation with us.
