What gives meaning to your life?

I was listening to NPR the other day – which I usually do to try and distract me from my hellish commute to NYC every day – and they featured a segment called, “Making Parenthood A Reality Through IVF Grants.”
 

It was an interesting topic to me (since I had been through that god-awful process myself) so I kept it tuned to Morning Edition with Soterios Johnson (by the way – there’s one for the baby name list!)
 

To sum it up, the reality is that most insurance companies do NOT cover IVF, and as a result, many couples can’t afford the $15,000 or so that it takes to undergo the treatments.

Anyway, the story profiles a couple who couldn’t have kids on their own, and who also, didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend on these super expensive treatments. Fortunately for them – after a few failed IVF attempts and remortgaging their house –  they found an organization that offered a scholarship IVF program, and in the end, they end up having a baby boy.
 

And while this story is very positive, and it’s wonderful that this couple now has the baby they’ve always wanted, there was one quote from the woman that really struck me. She said:

 "What's the purpose of any of this… if you're not going to have your own children to try to help make the world a better place? I didn't think my life would have any real meaning."

 OK. I guess that’s one reason to have kids.

 But my thought after hearing that was… if you really want to make the world a better place… think about the millions and millions of kids out there who have no parents at all. Kids who would give anything to have a family. Kids that you could give a home to. Kids who you could love and nurture. Kids who you could help become the best people they could possibly be… and kids who you could raise to make the world a better place. What about that? Do you think that would give meaning to your life?

(getting off my soapbox now...)

I just think there comes a time, at least it did for Ken and I, when you put all that “we need to have a baby that comes from us, that looks like us, that has Ken’s nose, and my lips (because Ken doesn’t really have any) – and you move forward and say you just want to be parents and love another little human being.
 
Think about this: UNICEF, which defines an orphan as a child that has lost one or both parents, estimates that there were over 145 million orphans worldwide as of 2007.

 Now... that’s a whole bunch of kids who could give anyone’s life “real meaning.”