Re:75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime wi...
by dragonwriter on Wednesday October 19, 2022 @05:22AM
(#33259567)
> If it makes you feel any better I delayed having kids and spent my 30s dating and hanging out and going to bars – and it was terrible.
I didn’t have kids until my 40s – didn’t delay, it just worked out that way – after getting married in my late 20s, spending…very little time dating or hanging out in bars, and it was wonderful. So was having kids. And once I had them, I certainly wouldn’t have minded having more of the energy of youth with them, but I also don’t mind the life experience that I had first.
> I had a nice career and could go anywhere and do anything I wanted, but it turns out none of that made me even a little bit happy. […] Happiness is extremely overrated.
Happiness isn’t overrated; as you yourself explicitly note, you didn’t find it and were miserable because of that.
> Now I’m tired and busy and I don’t go out and do “fun” stuff very often, but I’m much more satisfied. My biggest regret is that I waited so long to start my life. Brunch isn’t life.
Brunch (both literally and, as I understand the use, metaphorically) very much is life (not all of life, but, in its slice, as much “life” as anything else), for many people.
So can kids be, for many people.
So is anything you have a passion for, whether its the activity, or the companions, or the mission motivating the activity. (Bonus if it is a combination of all of those.)
Doing things merely because you’ve got the idea that it is socially expected that they will provide happiness, though, usually isn’t going to be it.
I didn’t have kids until my 40s – didn’t delay, it just worked out that way – after getting married in my late 20s, spending…very little time dating or hanging out in bars, and it was wonderful. So was having kids. And once I had them, I certainly wouldn’t have minded having more of the energy of youth with them, but I also don’t mind the life experience that I had first.
> I had a nice career and could go anywhere and do anything I wanted, but it turns out none of that made me even a little bit happy. […] Happiness is extremely overrated.
Happiness isn’t overrated; as you yourself explicitly note, you didn’t find it and were miserable because of that.
> Now I’m tired and busy and I don’t go out and do “fun” stuff very often, but I’m much more satisfied. My biggest regret is that I waited so long to start my life. Brunch isn’t life.
Brunch (both literally and, as I understand the use, metaphorically) very much is life (not all of life, but, in its slice, as much “life” as anything else), for many people.
So can kids be, for many people.
So is anything you have a passion for, whether its the activity, or the companions, or the mission motivating the activity. (Bonus if it is a combination of all of those.)
Doing things merely because you’ve got the idea that it is socially expected that they will provide happiness, though, usually isn’t going to be it.