You are a child until you have a child.
Until the moment you hold that baby in your arms, you are yourself a child. You see the world from that perspective. You are on that side of things, and it colores everything you feel.
My dad always joked about how we didn't see us in our room when we were asleep because we were always too sweet. It's parental humor. Something good.
You may be an older child who graduated from university 10 years ago, but you are still a child.
And it all changes. Or at least the seeds of change will be planted and you will be thrown to the other side forever.
Big difference
The world is divided between those with and without children. It is the parents and childrenless people of our society, and the battle is just beginning. As we move into the future, it only intensifies, with more and more childless people growing older and growing without becoming parents.
But I am not here to blow this conflict away. I'm not here to attack anyone who has no children for any reason. I simply want to state the facts of life. We are not the same.
It's hard to pinpoint what it is to actually separate children with their children. It's not politics. It's not money. It's not education. It's not culture. Some have children and some have none of all aspects.
And it's not a good person either. There are bad people who are bad parents. Great people who aren't parents.
It's not necessarily a responsibility, even though the kids are demanding it. It's all deeper than this. It is a certain essence or knowledge. Or, once you have a child, what you perceive is a kind of acceptance of the true sign.
It's missing
There's something about the defect. It is one of those truths in the constellations. It's not just the imperfections of the surface of a scratch-up table, the walls that are constantly covered in graffiti, or the perception that you haven't had a “good thing” for a long time.
(And that's fine. By the way, good things are overrated.)
But that's more than that. Something strange. It is about the imperfection of life itself. Having a child forces us to give up trying to think of ourselves as perfect. When we are parents, we want to be good role models, so we try to be better than us. So we aim to be bigger (or more perfect) in this sense.
But at the same time, our children are forced to reveal how short we are. Their innocence reveals our corrupt nature in more moving terms. Life is not perfect. We are not either.
You're beaten, tired of work, tired of enclosing kids in the car, guiding them along the sidewalk, clean the rice from the floor after dinner, tired like hell, count down a few minutes until you can finally get a break once your kids are in bed. And when they finally fall asleep after about 15 minutes, it feels bad to want to get into bed as soon as possible.
“Fuck.”
Good things
There are certain ways to say that as a dad. Under your breath, by yourself, in the morning, late at night, in the car, heading back to the house, sitting by the window, looking at a picture of a child from a few years ago.
The way you say it, that's the tragic part. The part where he resigned.
It's the feeling that people without children don't understand. My dad always joked about how we didn't see us in our room when we were asleep because we were always too sweet. It's parental humor. Something good. Once you get it, you're sardonic and deeply sensitive. That's something you can't relate to if you don't have children.
When you have children, you spin a dish. Your arms reach wider and you are pulled in 100 directions at a time.
Merciful dictator
It plays more roles than ever before. You are like a dictator who manages the education system, religious system, health system, housing, and more.
Your stress tolerance increases and you naturally begin to think less about yourself than before. You fade in a way and you are no longer at the heart of your own world.
You are a leader and you need to manage your people as the ruler manages him, which requires a stronger stomach. You must always lie because you will never tell your children the whole truth. The answer for a 5 year old is not a completely honest answer. There are things they don't know yet.
They also teach children to lie to their next breath. Yes, that's complicated.
In fact, it is difficult for parents to take the concerns of children without children so seriously. They look more and more trivial deep within the parents you get. They feel like a child's concern.
But you also remember how you felt as a child before you had children, so you know they don't feel it to them. It's not their fault that we feel that way, and it's not us that we feel that way. None of them are the fault of anyone. That's fine, we all have our own role in this life. But we are not the same.
You are a child until you have a child, and you will never be able to return.
