Fatherhood

`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

`4:16:55`

that the love you develop to an infant, it happens quite quickly. Not necessarily immediately, I don't know, different people have different experiences, but it took me a little bit. But then once it hit, it just hit like kick of a horse. And I love that it's also just such a universal experience. That you can be the most successful person in the world. You can be the poorest person in the world. You can be somewhere in the middle. And we share this experience that being a parent, for most of them, turns out to be the most important thing in their life. — But you know, it is really nice to do that kind of experience with the right partner. But I think because I'm such an empath, the cost of having the wrong partner is high for me. But then I also like realized, man, I have a friend of mine who's divorced happily and he still loves the shit out of his kids. And it's still beautiful. It's a mess, but there's all of that love is still there

`4:17:56`

and it's, you know, you just have to make it work. It's just that, I don't know, that kind of like divorce would destroy me. — You should listen to The School of Life. He has this great bit on YouTube. You'll marry the wrong person. If you accept upfront that you will marry the wrong person, that every potential person you can marry is gonna be the wrong person on some dimension. They're gonna annoy you. They're gonna be not what you hoped in certain dimensions. The romantic ideal that everything is just perfect all the time is not very conducive to the reality of hitching up and get making babies. Because I think as you just accounted, even when it turns to shit, I find that most of the people I personally know where things have fallen apart and have turned to shit, never in a million years would they go like, "I regret it." "I would rather, my children did not exist because a relationship turned sour."

`4:18:57`

I mean, I think you should try very hard. And I think this is also one of those things where we didn't fully understand those fences. And when we pulled them up and celebrated how easy it is to get divorced, for example, that that wasn't gonna have some negative consequences. I'm not saying you shouldn't have divorces. I'm not saying return to times past. I'm saying though that civilization over thousands of years developed certain technologies for ensuring the continuation of its own institutions and its own life that perhaps we didn't fully appreciate. I mean, again, this is something Jordan Peterson and others are far more articulate to speak about, and that I've learned a lot to just analyze my own situation. Why is it that this incredible burden, it is to be responsible for someone else's life that you brought into this world is also the most rewarding part of existence? That's just curious. Before I heard Peterson articulate the value of taking on the greatest burden you know how to carry,