Fatherhood

`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.

`4:09:42`

And now that I am in this situation and just the sheer joy on a daily basis where you think your level of life satisfaction is on a scale of one to 10, and then the satisfaction of seeing your children understand something, accomplish something, learn something, do something, just be. Just goes like, oh my god, the scale doesn't go from one to 10. It goes from one to 100. And I've been playing down here in the one to 10 range all this time. And there's a one to 100 that has been humbling in a way that is impactful in and of itself. This whole idea that I thought I had a fair understanding of like the boundaries of life in my early 30s, like what is this about? I mean, I've been on this earth long enough now here to know something. And you realize, I don't know, I did not know. I did not know that the scale was much broader.

`4:10:46`

And I've often talked about joys of having kids and just seeing your own DNA, which is remarkable to me because literally that's been the pursuit of humans since the dawn of time. I am here today because whatever, 30,000 years ago, some Neanderthal had the same realization that I should procreate and I should continue my bloodline. And that that all amounts to me sitting here now. But it didn't become a practical reality to me before meeting the right woman. And I think that that's sometimes not part of the conversation enough that there's something broken at the moment about how people pair up in the western world. And it's at the source of why we're not having enough children because there's not enough couples, there's not enough marriage. There's not a lot of these... There's not enough of all these traditional values that even 50, 60, 70 years ago

`4:11:47`

was just taken for granted. We're in this grand experiment of what happens if we just remove a bunch of institutions? What happens if we no longer value marriage as a something to aspire to? What happened if parenthood is now seen in some camps? It's almost something like weird or against your own self-expression. It's a grand experiment that I'm kind of curious how it turns out. I prefer to watch it as a movie like the "Children of Men," I'm like, that was a good show. I kind of wish that wasn't reality. But we're seeing that reality play out while I'm sitting here in a very traditional two parent loving household with three children, and going, this is now at the top. I've done a lot of things in my life. I've built software, I've built companies, I've raced cars, I've done all sorts of things, and I would trade all of it in a heartbeat for my kids.