When you love, you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.
—Ernest Hemingway
All of us are busy. We have conflicting responsibilities and a lot to manage besides that. Still, we can’t ever forget what our first, real job is. As the economist Bryan Caplan tells his children, all four of whom he now homeschools, “You are not an interruption of my work. You are my work.”
Our job is to raise great kids. Or, more precisely, our job is to raise great adults. The time we spend with our kids—whether it’s homeschooling or watching a TV show on the couch—is not a distraction from our work. It is the work. Really important work.
Who could really view their life as successful if they were famous but their kids were struggling? Who would be truly happy accepting a Nobel Prize knowing that they had failed as a parent? What good would a billion dollars be if all the money in the world can’t convince your kids to come home for the holidays? That’s why kids can never “take away” from our careers or “hold us back.” It’s not possible for them to interrupt our work . . . because they are our work.