When my pals first started having kids, I heard mostly what sounded like complaints and excuses and/or brags:
“We won’t be able to have dinner parties on Fridays anymore because (insert child’s name) has (insert activity)” and, “Oh, we have to leave early to pick (insert child’s name) from (insert place).”
By now, I’ve been doing this awhile tho so it’s second nature. Younger pals come around for guidance sometimes and there is no such thing. It’s personal. Super-personal experience, unique to everyone. There are common threads, some big ones tho, that no one ever mentions.
No one ever mentions how easy decision-making becomes. I don’t recall ever hearing anyone share how they stopped over-thinking decisions and/or stopped muscling unaligned choices into existence once they became parents. For me, this was a serious upgrade compared to how I operated before.
Suddenly, I could easily make tough decisions of all kinds in 7-seconds-or-less. Is the choice aligned with my son’t well-being or not? Boom.
Another example of something I wish someone’d shared with me about parenting? Free time. I waste precisely zero now. It’s astounding how much I can get done in a day. Whereas at first, I felt like I squandered a great deal of free time before but, no, no, not really. If I had all that time back to burn all over, again, I’d definitely use it up the same way. Early life is for that. For experiments, trying things on, fumbling around, establishing identity and values. Essential bungling.
If I could have it back, all the time that I wasted I’d only waste it, again (Arcade Fire)
For sure, one of the biggest gains has been how my creativity kicks into a new gear and more and more I find myself thinking about, making, and doing things for real, long-term value vs. more short-term or instantly-gratifying schwack. Time and place for it all maybe. Self-indulgent but exponentially more impact (one example below).
I’d love to be able to tell myself back then not to worry, in fact, like it or not, the hidden machinery of almost bearable existential fear quietly, imperceptibly forged me into what I was after, doing with impact.
Whatever it is, may your path produce discovery and satisfaction.
Parenting is all it’s cracked up to be.