There’s even an expression (one we’ve rebutted before) about how a stroller in the hall is the enemy of great art. Parenting comes with so many obligations, so many stresses—it is so all-consuming, it can’t help but be a distraction. But the writer Stephen Marche (who has an amazing little book on writing), once explained that “Being a writer and being a parent, I have found, are in conflict but not for the reasons most believe—the loss of time, the sleeplessness, the responsibility for another life, the fixedness in place, the need to make money to support them. Having children, like losing your virginity, changes the nature of meaning.”

You have seen something, finally gotten something that people tried to tell you but you just couldn’t understand. Happiness is not in achievement, it’s not in stuff, it’s in people—specifically, it’s with these people. It’s in the stillness. The presence is the present, the gift that never gets old. And once you get this, you can still succeed and achieve, to be sure, but you can never go back to how you were before.

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