Kids and Values

Writing at The Cut, Heather Havrilesky offers some tongue-in-cheek advice in the form of her title, "Want to Be Better at Your Job? Have a Kid.," and quite a bit of insight from her experience as a mother:

[W]hen the leisure hours you used to spend doing stupid, unrewarding crap are eliminated, that leaves only about three seconds to do stuff you truly love. You're forced to ask yourself, "Now that I have exactly three seconds of free time, how do I really want to spend that time?" And then something strange happens. You TRULY SAVOR those three seconds of free time, maybe for the first time ever. You savor that time the way your little monster savors sucking on your favorite silk scarf or smearing poop all over your favorite armchair.

Her experiences of better realizing the value of her time and of learning to make better use of it remind me a little of mine, and they remind me of someone I knew long ago who really cleaned up her act once she had a kid.

I see a combination of a high standard of living and poor education making it quite easy for many to fall into the trap of being both purposeless and completely oblivious to how wonderful things often are these days. Youth is truly wasted on the young when their meager life's experience includes little hardship and less knowledge of whence their good fortune came.

-- CAV