By James Ledbetter
People often say that having children gives you perspective. They don’t usually mean cosmic perspective, but sometimes that’s what you get. One recent morning, when my 3-year-old son Henry and I had finished watching a space video on YouTube, he asked me with equal parts curiosity and worry: “What will happen when the Andromeda galaxy collides with the Milky Way?”
I can say with supreme confidence that this question has never occurred to me. I told him I didn’t know, but, since space contains a lot of…well, space, it could be that the two galaxies would connect without any collision. More importantly (and hoping to comfort him), I added that this event, if it occurs at all, is probably 4 billion years away. His response: “I’m still very concerned.”
While this galactic quandary doesn’t seem to be keeping him up at night, it has definitely given me a lot to think about. Henry’s interest in space is normal, healthy and—especially given the other things that can take up a 3-year-old’s mind—something his mother and I have very much encouraged.
Watching him learn even the basics of the solar system is actually instructive for us, too. Thanks to better telescopes and space probes, the astronomy taught to young children is dramatically different than it was a few decades ago—among other things, there are dozens more known moons in our solar system; one of Saturn’s moons contains water; and Pluto has been demoted to dwarf-planet status. Watching Henry learn about space makes me feel rejuvenated by knowledge that literally did not exist in the 1970s, and simultaneously humbled at the limitations of my understanding (as my parents no doubt were humbled by my own learning). At a minimum, there seems to be plenty for a next generation of astrophysicists and engineers to tackle, and we’d be thrilled if he were inspired and dedicated enough to join them.
At the same time, the question of perspective does gnaw at me a bit. Some of my discomfort stems from what you might call parental opportunity costs: How much time is it worth spending to teach a multi-billion-year frame of reference to a kid before, say, he can write his whole name with a crayon? Similarly, while we may cheer his capacity to learn about astronomy at a precocious age, it seems potentially irresponsible to favor that activity over the play-based learning we know is important at his age.
Another issue is wrapped up in mortality. One reason why he might be concerned with an event that is billions of years away is because he’s yet to grasp that he—and all of the world he knows—will not be around when it happens. Even the brightest 3-year-old is incapable of reasoning at that scale. And how much do I genuinely want to encourage such reasoning, especially if it’s premature? Sure, understanding the big picture is important—but you don’t want it to overwhelm the sense that smaller pictures matter, too. To put it starkly: measured by the yardstick of an Andromeda collision, it hardly matters whether he was born or not, and that’s not a point of view I’m keen to express—to him or to myself!
Still, I’m grateful for the perspective. One of the lessons you learn being a parent that’s useful in all aspects of life is: Your view of what is important or unimportant isn’t necessarily the only view, and everything is subject to change. Henry may well drop the space obsession. I eventually did, at an older age, largely because the math overwhelmed me (I hope my limits won’t be my son’s). And even if he keeps at it, the Andromeda point-of-view might prove to be a helpful corrective to the myopic focus on the here-and-now to which adults are prone. Besides, if the collision with Andromeda does have disturbing implications for our neck of the galaxy, the human race is going to need another place to live. Henry may as well start working on that.
James Ledbetter is the editor of Inc. and Inc.com, and the author or editor of five books, including Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex.
