Sundry reflections on fatherhood

The thing I enjoy more than anything else in the world is spending time with my kids. After that, the thing I enjoy second-most, is having some quiet time away from my kids.

I had never realized what mortality meant until I had my first child. You cannot experience the reality of birth, a new life, without also coming to terms with the inevitability of death, that your own life will have an end. Memento mori.

Quality time is a myth. Quantity is the greatest quality when it comes time. Your kids don’t care about how you spend the time with them as long as you’re there. It is worth optimizing your life to get every chance to spend time with your kids — it is only going to decrease as they grow up.

I never really cared for birthdays. Sure, birthday parties are fun, but a birthday never held much meaning for me in the way it does for many people. Until the first time I held my new-born in my arms. I get it now.

Having children re-wires you in a way that is impossible to explain to someone who hasn’t had a child. For that reason, it is futile to try to convince someone to have kids. Your frames of reference are so far apart it is as if you’re speaking different languages.

You think you love your children so much that it melts your heart. But wait till you see them love each other and care for each other — THAT will melt your heart in a way you didn’t think possible.

Kahlil Gibran wrote:

“Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

I believe this whole heartedly - they are their own person.

In the nature vs nurture argument, there is a scientific argument for nature winning out over nurture — genes play a stronger role than your parental influence. Steven Pinker’s school of thought (and some evidence) says that a child’s peer group will influence them even more than their parents. Adding up what Kahlil Gibran and Steven Pinker have said, and my own observations in trying to get my kids to clean up or eat dinner, sometimes I feel like I should resign myself to my primary contribution to their lives being nominative determinism :)

As you discover your love for your children, you also realize the love that your parents must have for you, in a way you could never have understood before. The small acts of sacrifice stand larger, the rankling transgressions are diminished. Your children teach you to love your parents more.

Hinduism has a concept of pitra-rin (पितृ ऋण). It translates to “paternal (ancestral?) obligation”. The idea being that you owe your ancestors for this life and your place in it. You are taught that it is a debt which cannot be repaid, save for by having children of your own. When I would try to rationalize it (as I often do for old rituals and traditions), it naturally seemed like an ancient memetic hook to get tribes to promulgate. But — from the previous observation — once you feel that deep love for your children, only then do you truly appreciate your parents. Having kids is the only way to recognize your parents’ love and acts of selflessness. Perhaps that recognition and appreciation is the true fulfillment of पितृ ऋण. I now see that I am the receptacle of generations of love and sacrifice.

It is easy to love your children. It’s like staring at a sunset or a beautiful painting or enjoying ice cream — your mind and body are programmed to it. What is hard is being a parent that inspires love and respect in your children. At 2, you are their entire world. At 5, you realize that it’s possible to do small things — things that you don’t even notice, that hold little meaning to you — that they notice and makes them feel let down. As they grow older, you need to be more and more mindful of how your words and actions affect them. They notice and take in everything. The real work is not the act of loving them but of nurturing the love for you in them, as they grow and become a new person every few months.