Beware, young woman…
Happiness is fickle.
I'm not writing this to scold.
I'm writing it because I live in an honest hope that someone says it aloud, before yet another generation walks into the same trap -
To confuse the comfort of the moment with the fullness of life.
Because yes… it can absolutely feel liberating at the age of 29 to say -
"I can't be bothered with children. I've never been happier."
But happiness is not static. It moves. It changes form. It demands something of us.
And there comes a time - especially later in life - when the silence in a childless home becomes deafening. Not because you're a bad person. Not because it's life's only meaning - but because nature has written certain laws into us that no ideology or passion can erase.
The emptiness many encounter in their forties, fifties and sixties is brutal and concrete -
Nothing can fill the space that the love, depth and anchoring of family provides. Nothing creates the same breadth. The same meaning. The same continuity of life.
How have we as a culture and society managed to fail so grotesquely at passing this wisdom on?
I'm the first to say -
Yes, there is a time for travel, parties, pursuing passions, career, freedom, dreams.
OF COURSE!
It's beautiful and necessary.
And part of Western civilisation's dream of Freedom for the individual!
But it must be woven together with the other great dimension of being human -
To create, carry and pass life forward.
Life is a tapestry you must weave richly in all directions -
Love
Family
Friendship
Health
Work and creation
Faith and depth
Struggle and adversity
Hope and responsibility
Joys and sorrows
Heritage and descendants
Through work with yourself and understanding of humanity's inherent wisdom.
When those threads meet - that's where fullness arises!
Life is not rich - and NO ONE envies you - when at 63 you walk home alone, lock yourself into a silent flat, eat dinner alone, go to bed alone - without anyone to mirror life in, without faces that remind you of yourself, without small souls to follow on the journey through the world that once shaped you.
No one to rejoice over.
No one to worry about.
No one to take up the baton, and no Love to hold your hand, assure you that everything is alright and thank you for all you gave, when you one day let go and must move on… because you will! No one gets out alive.
To live 30-40 years that way… It's a catastrophe. And it's one we as a culture should fight against, not romanticise.
We owe the young the Truth.
A life without children can feel free, but for the vast majority that freedom becomes a prison of loneliness as time passes.
❤️🔥🪽
…
Take it as a reminder.
Or as a warning, if you need it.
But stop for a moment… and feel whether you're caught by the Spirit of the Age -
"If my own parents had thought that way - would I even exist?"
That question alone should make something in you awaken.
So embrace life, friends! Women! Men!
Throw yourselves into it. Take the risk. Give yourselves over.
Create something that reaches beyond yourselves.
Shape a life that doesn't end at your own nose. Build a masterpiece where you take the entire human experience with you - and where children are not a burden, but life's actual wealth.
Don't live small in the ego's narrow and severely limited notions of "freedom".
Choose instead The Great Way.
Bind yourself, connect yourself, inward and upward - use your entire being to dream up an image of "who you could be", "how life would be richest", if you gave it EVERYTHING you had in you. If you lived as yourself - fully, wildly and most deeply in an intense and intimate love affair with Creation itself, the World and Life.
The dream where you pass life forward - and step into the story you yourself were carried into by those who went before you.
