Happy Mothers Day...

As usual I find these manufactured holidays mildly problematic, if not somewhat philosophically questionable.  Here, we are being asked to celebrate the mothers-- and yet, as dependent as we are on them for our very existence (which already introduces ontological dilemmas into the equation), it almost seems we are begging the question here, for we would not exist without our mothers, some of us of course would still be here without our fathers, which is why I will indicate that Fathers Day is also a difficult proposition.  Should we be cursing our mothers for bringing us into this world?  Some may with quite justifiable reasoning do exactly that, those who live in the poorer countries forced to relieve themselves in nearby farmer's fields from which they derive their daily bread.  As well we are really merely pledging allegiance to the instincts of nature-- for isn't it this that makes the mother love her children?  Isn't this why the mother can't help herself: yelling at them to brush their teeth in the morning, eat all their broccoli, and punch back the schoolyard bully? Surely we are not so self-absorbed as to think she loves us for ourselves, or for our talents, as groupies do rock stars, we might as well be idolizing endocrinology, or a given hormone du jour, perhaps, as medical research seems to suggest, we should be calling this 'oxytocin day'?  Do we have a migration day, in which we worship the instinct that causes songbirds, or for example, the wonderful monarch butterfly to travel to Mexico each winter, in a path that requires several generations of butterflies and caterpillars to complete?  Surely the ants should get together and decide democratically if Hallmark should institute such a holiday for us all-- and the cards we'd give to the butterflies would of course feature such  beautiful orange colours!  And when they'd open the cards, rather than a tinny song, they'd get a puff of pollen or nectar!  And what about the first eukaryotic cells that divided by fission before sexual reproduction was created, did they celebrate Fission Day?  And what about lions-- the female not only rears the children single-handedly, she is the only sex that hunts!  The male lion can merely sit in the shade and sleep, with his harem of a dozen mothers, and take the food the mothers killed, and of course he gets first choice.  Then he proceeds to select the wife for the night.  In leonine cases I am willing to say, Happy Mothers Day, because they surely do a lot of work, compared to the humans.  Of course once again Fathers Day then becomes problematic, as the male lion is known to commit infanticide on the babies that are not his.  The fact that he is quite unlikely to celebrate this holiday and bring flowers to his harem and massage the mothers' backs, as opposed to the reverse, is beside the point-- I mean, like most of you men out there, mothers day obviously is just an abstract conception, a theoretical construct, not something I would really do anything about, naturally.  No, indeed, this mothers day business is surely too existential for me...