Fatherhood

`4:06:38`

It took meeting the right woman and letting her convince me That this was the right idea before we even got started. I didn't have starting my own family on the list of priorities in my late 20s or even early 30s. It was really the impetus of meeting my wife Jamie and her telling me this is what I want. I wanna have a family. I wanna get married. I wanna have kids. I wanna have three. And me going for a second like whoa, whoa, whoa. And then eh, all right, let's do it. And I think that's the kind of happy accident where some parts of my life have been very driven, where I knew exactly what I wanted and how to push forward to it and what the payoff was going to be. But when it comes to having a family,

`4:07:40`

that always felt like a very fuzzy abstract idea that sure, someday, maybe. And then it became very concrete because I met a woman who knew what she wanted. And looking back on it now, it almost seems crazy. Like there's this fork in the road of reality. Where if that hadn't happened and I had been sitting here now, not being a father, not having a family, the level of regret knowing what I know now about the joys of having that family would've been existential, would've been... I don't know if they would've been devastating. I think men have a little bit of a longer window to pursue these things than women do. There are just certain biological facts. But ending up with the family I have now,

`4:08:42`

ending up with my three boys have been just a transformative experience in the sense that here's something that turned out to be the most important thing. And it was an open secret. Not even an open secret. It was an open truth through all of history. You listen to anyone who's ever had children, they will all say, "My children are the most important to me." Yet somehow that wisdom couldn't sink in until you were in the situation yourself. I find those truths fascinating when you can't actually relay them with words. I can tell you, Hey Lex, what are you doing? Get a wife, make some kids, get a move on it. And these are just words. They're not communicating the gravity of what it actually feels to go through the experience. And you can't really learn it without going through it. Now of course you could be influenced and whatever, we can all help contribute and little sparks and little seeds can grow in your your mind about it. But it still has to happen.