Some days, walking through Galway, I notice something that other people seem to pass by without thought.
I see children with Down Syndrome - smiling, waving, holding hands with a sibling or a parent. The parents look tired sometimes, of course, but there’s something else there too. A kind of steadiness. A kind of warmth. A sense that life is being lived, not optimized.
And then I watch other families in the same cafés, the same restaurants - perfectly “healthy” children staring into screens, wearing headsets, lost inside some cartoon universe, their tiny hands swiping, their eyes glazed. Parents half-present, half-distracted. Everyone together, yet nobody really there.
It makes me wonder.
In some countries, the first group of children would never have been born. A scan, a test, a quiet conversation, and the “problem” is solved before it begins. The child who might have slowed life down, who might have demanded patience, who might have pulled a family closer and softened the world around them - gone before they ever drew breath.
Meanwhile, the “perfect” child arrives, and is handed over to the glowing machine almost immediately. Fed a diet of dopamine loops, marketed identities, and the strange, flattening violence of social media. Not damaged by biology, but by culture. Not limited by nature, but by neglect.
It feels like an inversion of values.
The child who could have taught us something about gentleness, about humanity, about presence - eliminated.
The child who arrives with every advantage - surrendered to a system that erodes attention, empathy, imagination.
I don’t have a conclusion.
It’s just something I notice.
Maybe the “imperfect” children are holding on to something the rest of society has misplaced. Maybe the “perfect” children are paying the price of living in a world that worships efficiency more than connection.
Maybe the real question isn’t about the children at all.
Maybe it’s about us.