Freedom: Why Become a Parent, Pt. 3
"I'm not going to get married and have kids now because I want the freedom to go where I want and do what I like."
We're sitting in the bare bones of a newly-purchased condo. Boxes of tile, tubes of grout, and various tools are arranged haphazardly against the wall. We're reclining in camp chairs and sipping beers after a moonlit ski through Anchorage's inner-city trail network.
"Anne wanted to settle down and raise horses and children. But that’s not who I am."
My friend, we'll call him Sven, achieved no small amount of success in the medical profession, before he decided to pursue aviation as a career. He's traveled extensively across the US and internationally. He even served as a medic and foot soldier defending Ukraine during the opening days of Russia's invasion. All before turning twenty-seven. If anyone has a right to argue for personal freedom, it's Sven.
"Look, fair enough," I said. "You want to have the option to leave at a moment's notice; to capitalize on once-in-a-lifetime opportunities like you have in the past, right?"
"That's right," Sven said.
"But that sort of potential is a young man's game," I said. "As painful as it is, this is the course of life for men. Seeking glory through feats of courage is a rite of passage for young men. This adventure impacts self-confidence, network, and status. The effects of youthful adventure ripple throughout a man's life."
"Yes, and it works," Sven said, "If I'd been tied down to a family, I wouldn't be where I am today." I'll be honest: the thought of fighting in the trenches of a war beckons to a long-subdued primal core of my being. But I knew the disheartening truth of pursuing glory.
"Seeking adventure is not a reasonable long-term strategy for most," I said. "Yes, there are men who continue (or start) to pursue various conquests as they age. But these escapades are the domesticated offspring of the potent exploits of youth.
Having nothing to offer the world in terms of skill or experience, young men can, and often must, make a name for themselves. This entails daring in the exact proportion of status sought and, quite often, the wagering of life itself."
"But that's what makes it worthwhile," Sven said with a brilliant smile. "Going after a goal that might cost your life hardens you and shows you what you are capable of doing."
"You're right. But men do need to pivot to a mentoring/fathering role as they near their mid-to-late twenties."
"But, settling down, getting married, and having kids preclude you from many options," Sven said.
"Yes, but all great pursuits do," I replied. "Going towards any worthwhile goal necessarily eliminates one's ability to effectively pursue most other goals. It's a bottleneck, not a dead end. You come out on the other side with more opportunities than you initially had."
"It's that bottleneck that I'm trying to avoid," Sven said. "I don't want to have to pass up a great opportunity because I was pursuing a good one. If I had chosen to sign a contract as a respiratory therapist at a hospital during COVID, I wouldn't have been able to go to Ukraine to fight."
"But the bottleneck forces you to strive for an established, and often public goal. To calculate pressure in mathematics, you simply divide the force by the surface area onto which it is applied. A decrease in surface area increases the pressure. This applies to humans in precisely the same manner: the narrower the focus, the more pressure a given effort applies. This narrowing of focus also increases creativity because one must use the inherently limited and suboptimal resources at their disposal to meet the goal specified."
"Increases creativity?" Sven asked.
"Yeah! Did you know that the famed Massachusetts Institute of Technology has an online archive of haiku about Spam*? There are over nineteen thousand poems!"
"Ha, ok," Sven said. "Can you tell me about a time when you restricted yourself in the pursuit of a goal?"
"Flight training. I dedicated years of my life to acquiring the qualifications, experience, and college degree** needed to become a pilot. And, after running the numbers, I knew I'd be better off in the case of success if I bought an airplane and used that for training. But to do so, I would have to cash in my retirement account. I wagered over a decade of my life savings on myself. If I was wrong about my potential to pilot, it would cost me everything I'd work for, everything I’d ever saved; and quite possibly my marriage as well.
This precluded me from pursuing any other significant goal for more than two years. To accomplish my goal, I became disciplined with my time usage and far more creative and efficient in applying for scholarships. The result was that I graduated with Highest Honors and only owed $22,000 instead of the typical $100,000.
Now, I have more opportunities for work than I had before I started flight training. I can pursue flying jets in the United Arab Emirates, bush planes in South Africa, or dropping firefighters in the Pacific Northwest. And, as a direct result of that voluntary bottlenecking, I now have the financial means to take my wife and children with me."
Progressing from adolescence into adulthood and then into parenthood does come with stark changes. But these changes do not preclude one from adventure, they simply change the scope of impact and the characters in play.
*https://web.mit.edu/jync/www/spam/
**For the record, few airlines now require a college degree of any sort.