<div class="text-justify">

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague today about parenting, where with two boys and one with severe allergies, she and her partner have their hands full. Life can be challenging with a kid with allergies, and it tends to put a dampener on many occasions, as a lot of the time is spent making sure that firstly there is food available, and then that food is not going to cause any kind of reaction. There is a constant vigilance required, combined with a constant fear.


![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/tarazkp/23wWJo5j3RjBzuL8jYAbB431KRtRRaVFjWD8mh3mkNiorFQexPSgRq2P16AF6wf6X926t.png)


However, the conversation wasn't about this, it was about how *despite the work* involved, having children. I mentioned how interesting it is that while so much of the public conversation is around the parental challenges with children, pretty much every parent believes that the value their children bring to their lives far outweighs the drawbacks. In fact, as she mentioned herself, children provide a massive amount of meaning to life - the *rewards* are enormous.

> A lot of people are searching for meaning, aren't they?

This isn't to say that everyone should just have children, but I do think that these days, people seem to have priorities that don't consider the different stages of their life, and how their own preferences and even their long-held belief systems can change quite drastically over time. How I see it is that a lot of the younger generations are valuing their youth experiences and the rewards they get from those now, without considering if they will value the same things in the future. They want a meaningful life, but what provides "meaning" at various stages of life can be very different indeed. 

One of the things that I believe a lot of the younger people are discounting is their need to feel "known" by others. It is clear from the general social media behaviors that they have a desire for attention, but they don't yet recognize how important it is to be known over time, to have consistent experience with people across multiple stages of life. They also don't seem to realize how rewarding it is to be part of other people's stages of life also - which is something parents experience intimately.

If we look at our experience in life as an investment in which we are looking to grow our returns, increase our rewards, we also have to recognize that there are diminishing returns on some investments. What we find rewarding at twenty, is less so at thirty, and at forty, even less again. However, if we keep favoring the activities of our youth without altering them for the shifting of our values, we end up in a situation where we are over capitalized in a market that just can't return what we need to cover the costs. 

> And there are costs.

There are always consequences to our behaviors, but it isn't always clear what behaviors lead to what outcomes. For instance, the rate of depressed young people is accelerating, yet what is causing this? Of course, there are lots of hypotheses and I have my own ideas where I think a big part of it is due to the relationships they are forming and the way they are interacting with each other, as well as themselves, but others might have their own ideas. Life is just harder.

> But why?

"Life" as we know it is just a series of behaviors and outcomes from many actions that we experience at an individual level. Our experience is nothing spooky, nothing supernatural, it is just inputs and outputs. What we put in, we get out, but it is all affected by all of the other inputs and outcomes also. 

Over the last couple years, there has been mention of the "loneliness epidemic" as if it is something that has been unpredictable. However, it has been inevitable, not just in retrospect, but looking forward from decades ago. Over the last twenty odd years I have been drawing attention to how our behaviors are leading us into societal depression and loneliness, but I was often laughed at. People have seen it as an acute problem that affects the individual, but I believe that it is systemic, it is built into the way we have structured society, community, and our sense of self. 

And this is part of the problem, because we have been led to believe that our values of the moment are far more important than our values of the future. We have been conditioned for quick reward based on minimal investment, where meaning is derived from maximization of immediate return, even if it costs long term, compounding gains. 

>Having children is out of sync with the current investment mindset.

Yet, as our values change throughout life, will we start to expect returns and rewards that we can't get because we haven't invested the right behaviors to get those kinds of outcomes? This isn't just about having children or not, it is about society as a whole and how we as individuals experience the world. I see and hear a lot of people blaming the world for the suffering in their lives, but they don't look at how their own actions are at the very least, compounding the outcomes they are getting. And the more they struggle, the more they seem to invest into the quick return positions, which cost them their long term wellbeing.

If we want lifetime rewards, we have to invest for life. 
Life always changing, which means where we invest has to change too. 

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]



</div>