I am 44 years old. In a few month’s time I will be 45.
Yes guys—shit’s getting real.
But if I died today, would I, laying on my deathbed, regret the fact that I am unmarried and have no children?
Honestly, no, I don’t think I would.
I think that, if I find myself on my deathbed later (perhaps after too rich a lunch, or a too-excessive lifting session at the gym) I would simply think to myself ‘I’ve had a pretty good innings’
(As we cricket-obsessed Brits often say).
What I would regret is that I have not (yet) created a piece of literary writing of which I am sufficiently proud. But more on that in a moment.
Meaning
A common trope in the discussion around how we human beings should live our lives is that we should strive for something meaningful—and that real meaning is to be found in a serious relationship™ and having children. That pair bonding and procreation are not only the route to meaning, but they are also natural and therefore what everyone should ultimately do.
But is this really true? Or can you find meaning in life without marriage and kids?
Yes, of course you can: because the greatest meaning to be found in life is through your work, or, in other words, through your mission™.
Let us now consider some of the most famous bachelors the world has known:
- Leonardo Da vinci
- Beethoven
- Blaise Pascal
- Voltaire
- Isaac Newton
- Nietzsche
None of these men married or had children (although some of them had long-term affairs). Are we seriously going to say that their lives lacked meaning? Of course not—that would be absurd.
In fact, the opposite argument is preferable: namely, that by virtue of their having remained single, these men were better able to dedicate themselves to work that changed the world.
Now of course, you could just as easily come up with a list of hugely influential people who were married and had children, and who also changed the world. Well, fine. But think about this: which route makes creating great, meaningful work more likely? The route where you have a a family, with all the responsibilities, stresses and potential pitfalls that entails?
Or the one where you dedicate yourself single-mindedly to something of even greater meaning: your work.
The fact is that a creative life, where you produce consistently at a high level, is incredibly wearing emotionally, mentally and physically. Place the equally daunting effects of family life on top of that and you looking at a potential breakdown.
At the very least, something will have to give.
Which is precisely why Cyril Connolly has that famous quote:
There is no more sombre enemy of good art than the pram in the hall.
A little more from the same section:
In general it may be assumed that a writer who is not prepared to be lonely in his youth must if he is to succeed face loneliness in his middle age. The hotel bedroom awaits him. If, as Dr. Johnson said, a man who is not married is only half a man, so a man who is very much married is only half a writer. Marriage can succeed for an artist only where there is enough money to save him from taking on uncongenial work and a wife who is intelligent and unselfish enough to understand and respect the working of the unfriendly cycle of the creative imagination.
In Connolly’s worldview, marriage and kids are in fact antithetical to the artistic process. Therefore, rather than adding meaning to one’s life, they strip it away.
Marriage And Kids
Now of course, sacrificing family life to be a writer is not to everyone’s taste . . . but perhaps that is why there are only a very few famous writers out there. Because the truth is that most people, in the end, walk the established path from dating to serious relationship to cohabitation to marriage and to kids. And all of that takes up a hell of a lot of time, headspace and energy, preventing them from doing very much of anything else.
In a recent article for GQ, the American novelist Michael Chabon recounts how a famous (unnamed) writer told him not to have children:
“You can write great books,” the great man continued. “Or you can have kids. It’s up to you.”
Then he goes into greater detail:
“Put it this way, Michael,” the great man said, and then he sketched out the brutal logic: Writing was a practice. The more you wrote, the better a writer you became and the more books you produced. Excellence plus productivity, that was the formula for sustained success, and time was the coefficient of both. Children, the great man said, were notorious thieves of time.”
Well, that’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it? Children take up a lot of time. So does writing (or the creation of anything worthwhile).
Something has to give.
Now, it should be said that Chabon did not take the ‘great man’s’ advice—he has four kids and he is a successful writer.
But how often does that happen? As I said previously, most people end up getting hitched and popping out kids. And most people end up living mediocre, frankly forgettable lives. Which is hardly surprising—when all your time and energy goes into your family, what else do you expect?
Yes, Troy . . . but what about the children, I hear you wail. Children are the most wonderful thing in the world. And if you just ‘manned up™’ and ‘had the balls™’ you would see how much joy they bring, yada yada yada.
Yep. I get it. I’ve heard it all before. And remember, I’m not sitting in a fucking ivory tower here. I have friends and family who have children (and by the way, I love children, so this is not some kind of vendetta against them). And you’re right—everyone I speak to, without exception, talks of the huge, overwhelming love that they have for their children. A love that they could never even has envisioned prior to having them.
But are these parents universally happy? No. Do they experience greater ‘meaning’ in life as a result of having kids? No, not really. Are many of them stressed out, bored, resentful and angry? Yes.
Do some of them regret having children?
Yes.
Let’s be real here for a moment: the only people who EVER got famous just for having a kid are Mary and Joseph the Cuck. Because the barrier to entry for having one is spectacularly low, as you will see if you watch The Jeremy Kyle Show here in the UK.
Posterity is unimportant, of course. As Chabon writes, ‘that’s the problem, in the end, with putting all your chips on posterity: You never stick around long enough to enjoy it.’ Nevertheless, we have to do something when we are alive.
And it is incontestable that greatness is derived from the work you do rather than from your offspring. Because new discoveries and innovations in science, technology, music, literature and so on are simply harder to accomplish than pregnancy. And so fewer people achieve them.
In the end, as always, it is entirely up to you what you do with your life. But when people suggest that getting married and having children is the only way to have a meaningful life then pause for thought.
Unless you’re going to argue that Da Vinci and Isaac Newton and Nietzsche and many others had empty existences, of course.
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