Fatherhood

`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.

`4:12:49`

That's just a really fascinating human experience that the depth of that bond is something you can't appreciate before you have it. But I also think there is a role to play, to talk it up. Because we're being bombarded constantly with reasons why not to. Oh, it's too expensive. Well, you could get divorced and then you might lose half. There's all these voices constantly articulating the case against marriage, the case against having children that those of us who've chosen to do the traditional thing to get married and to have children have an obligation to kind of talk it up a little bit, which would've seen ridiculous again 50 years ago that you'd have to talk up something so fundamental of that. But I have become kind of obligated in that sense to do just that. To talk it up, to say, you know what?

`4:13:51`

You can look at everything that I've done and if you like some of those parts realize that to me in this situation, the kids, the family, the wife is more important than all of it. And it sounds like a cliche because you've heard it a thousand times before. And by becoming a cliche, maybe you start believing it's not true that it's just something people say, but it is reality. I know almost no parents that I have personal relationships with that don't consider their children to be the most important thing in their life. — So there's a lot of interesting things you said. So one, it does seem to be, I know a lot of parents, perhaps more interestingly, I know a lot of super successful people who are parents who really love their kids and who say that the kids even help them to be more successful. Now the interesting thing, speaking to what you're saying is it does seem for us humans,