Fatherhood

`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,

`4:14:52`

it's easier to articulate the negatives because they're sort of concrete, pragmatic, you know, it costs more, it takes some time, you know, they can be, you know, crying all over the place. They're, you know, tiny narcissists running around or whatever. — Which is all true. — Yeah, pooping everywhere, that kind of stuff. But to articulate the thing you were speaking to of there's this little creature that you love more than anything you've ever loved in your life. It's hard to convert that into words. You have to really experience it. But I believe it and I want to experience that, but I believe 'cause just from a scientific method, have seen a lot of people who are not honestly not very capable of love, fall completely in love with their kids. Like, you know, very sort of... let's just call it what it is, engineers that are very like boop bop. They just fall in love. And it's like, all right, people who just like you said, they don't really want, they don't really care

`4:15:55`

or don't really think about having kids that kind of stuff once they do it changes everything. So, you know, but it's hard to convert it into words. — One of the reasons I think is also difficult is, I mean, I like kids. Not that I actively disliked them, but when I was around other people's kids, I didn't have a emotional reaction. Some women have, right? They see a baby and they go, "Oh." I never had any emotion of that. I mean, I could appreciate, I'm glad for you that you have children. It did not provoke anything in me. The emotions that are provoked in me when I look at my own children, this doesn't exist in the same universe. So you don't have something, you don't have a complete parallel, or at least a lot of men, or at least me, I didn't have sort of a framework to put it into what would it be like to have my own child? And then you experience it. It's like the poof. And it happens so quickly too. This is what I found fascinating. It happens before that little human is even able to return any words to you