A man doesn’t need kids to be great.
But no great man lived only for himself.
Having children makes “purpose” easy. It automatically puts skin in the game. The world that exists after you die means something because your progeny must survive in it.
The resources and lifeskills you provide, the behavior you model, the academic and spiritual education you instill in them will be let loose in a future most of which you won’t see.
While I’m adamant in my believe that parents are not responsible for the choices their adult children make, that only applies if you taught your child right from wrong, if you set a good example, if you lived the philosophy you preached.
Do a well enough job — and let’s be honest, it doesn’t take a saint to not completely fuck up your kids — and they will be healthy, happy, and generally productive members of society.
As a rule: Dedicate enough of your time and energy to them as you would have them dedicate to their children.
Care enough to sacrifice yourself for their benefit when it comes to the big stuff, and yield your preference for theirs when it comes to the small stuff. Be there for them at their worst and hold them up when life hits them hardest. Listen to their shitty music in the car on a road trip and go on that bike ride even when you’d rather sit in the shade on the porch with a beer. Because whether you got them or not, those are the things you needed from your parents, and they are the things your kids will need to send productive children of their own into the world.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. — Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
It doesn’t matter if you have children. Selflessness is still the answer. Greatness comes from giving more to the world than you take.
If you don’t have kids, adopt — adopt a cause, a plot of land to develop, a project. Learn a language, an art, a skill that you can use to create something beautiful that outlives you. Join a club, volunteer, check in on an elderly neighbor to help around the house or yard, or to share a cup of coffee with. It doesn’t matter what you do as long as you’re doing it for a purpose that is greater than your own simple pleasure.
There is nothing inspiring in living just to survive the day. The world is already full of miserable, mediocre, maladapted people who wake up, go to work, go home, eat, shit, pass out on the couch, and wake up the next day to do it all over again. This lifestyle is the root of our discontent. Without a future, what is the motivation to strive, to work, to build, to create?
Because those things are your legacy. The things you do for you are not important. The sacrifice toward an end beyond yourself is what makes your life important, to you but also to people other than you.
You can die remembering your own selfishness, or you can die remembering what you contributed to the world. You can be remembered for what you did for you, or you can be remembered for what you did for others. Either way, if you’re lucky enough to be remembered at all, you will be remembered for the behavior you model to the world.
Act as you would have every man act who cared about the future of humanity.
If you are lucky enough to ever be so important that someone looks to you as a model for their behavior, know that what you do they will do before those who look up to them, and on and on, for better or worse.
May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law. — Immanuel Kant, The Categorical Imperative
via The Strive
