becoming a different person

[BeExcellent]

Advice from the old lady:

I am Gen X (nearing 60 but not there yet). I raised 3 children (youngest is 17 and finishing high school) who are responsible people. My youngest starts her first job tomorrow.

You are at an age where you are experiencing an exestential crisis in a way, because you are now feeling the weight of the responsibility for your daughter, which is 24/7/365 and a HEAVY responsibility and a COMMITMENT like you have never had before. So your life from before is indeed over, but now you move on to the next phase and you are adjusting because your entire paradigm of beliefs has been upended. So this is a natural introspection you are going through. Your baby daughter is helpless in every way and totally dependent on you and your wife. Its a revelation that life is no longer all about you. It is a call from selfishness to selflessness, from independence to interdependence,
and it is an invitation for you to embrace your new reality.

My son is now 23, married, and himself a father. My daughters are one grown & launched at nearly 21 and the 17yo I mentioned.

I was a person who enjoyed my 20s immensely but I was raised by a father who took his family responsibilities very seriously, so this was the same change for me and my first husband upon our son's arrival. Our lives changed like yours has.

Like @zekko I feel grateful and blessed. Now that my kids are just about all grown, I have the ability to pursue creative endeavors, benefit my children as well as charities through generosity and guidance, and I contribute here to try and offer advice & encouragement to others. I am not as beautiful as I once was, but as the beauty fades a certain peace and grace evolves and I find myself delighted to be experiencing my life as I do now. I am happy. I am fulfilled. I give advice to my children if they ask me; I give advice here.

The key word is GIVE.

You are breaking through disillusionment (think about what that word really means)....and as the false narrative recedes, I challenge you to embrace your new reality and all that it means.

Your children are your legacy. Nurture them & provide for them. Provide for yourself and your wife too, I never wanted to burden my children so I created sufficient financial security to pay for my life, provide for my children & have something to benefit them when I am gone.

Right or wrong I am proud of myself for that.

Your life is out of balance right now and will be for some time. Embrace your evolution; accept it. You are now in a delayed gratification phase. But at the other end is the satisfaction & reward of a life well lived. Of personal legacy.

The world doesn't care about you, that's true. But the world will notice if you create value for others. That is how any person builds a fortune, for example. It will confer meaning. Embrace your journey. These current stresses are temporary.

 

[BaronOfHair]

Your children are your legacy

We rely TOO much on our offspring for our "legacy"... Kids(especially the more one cranks out)could easily become 6th grade dropouts, who get hooked on meth and pop out 8 kids before age 17. All of whom end up wards of the state, and the drain on social services so many Fox News junkies/card carrying Anti-SJWs claim immigrants to be

It's far more advisable to write several best-selling books, direct a series of groundbreaking films, build a highly lucrative business, or even fly a hijacked Boeing into a skyscraper filled with over 3,000 unsuspecting office drones, if "legacy" is what one prioritizes

If anything, parenthood is more suited to those who's primary goal = A relatively mundane, non-descript life in suburbia somewhere

 

[ThisIsSparta]

Do you feel like you are not really the person you were before having children or several years ago? I feel like that for sure, I also feel quite detached from my own needs or feelings as my baby girl is almost 1 year old.

Not sure if it is only about feeling tired of taking care of job, child after job and trying to kickstart my business activity past my standard working hours or is it also connected with mid-life crisis - I have noticed that I lost most of my interest into my old hobbies and I often think about future of my family, my wife, mine and my daughter. I feel that my desires are of secondary importance now but I do not really care that much - I am recently thinking a lot about that I'm probably past 50% of my life on this planet (if not 80% or 99,9%) and I try to manage my family interest accordingly (I have already gathered some sum for my daughter to secure her needs in the future and I am putting some money on separate account for her each month even if I have other financial needs I need to take care of) I am also planning to spend even more time in job to make everyday count.

I do not regret anything as it lead me to the path and person I am today and I am content with it, however I sometimes wonder if I will ever reach a peace of mind - I feel that everything I do is not enough and even if reach some milestone (good position in a company I work in - checked, good salary - checked, cool, pretty wife - checked, beatiful baby girl - checked, family pet - checked, more than 1 real estate - checked, standard poster family image - checked) yet I feel sad that life is so short, that we need to let some things go in order to pursue the other - I am rarely feeling happy person even if when compared to some individuals I do well, but I still feel like a loser because I am not rich at this age, because I will not experience things I wanted to experience when I was 20-something guy, because even if I look young, I feel incredibly old inside - I have this "been there, done that, I know what he/she will do next" mentality all the time and the worst thing is I am usually right about my predictions about situations or people which increases my anxiety about life that human life stopped being mystery to me. Simultaneously great mysteries I wonder about from time to time - who created us, are we alone in this world, great chances like space exploration, whether there's any life after death - I will not obtain answers or experience these during my lifetime. I am too old to experience tech evolution that will considerably prolong my life and quality of it on this planet (augmentations are not really here and won't reach us in the next 20 years).

I also do not think I want to be an old man, I still look young but for how long? How long before I will in worse physical condition? This idea terrifies me - I had 68 year old colleague I smoked cigarettes with from time to time when I met him in the neighbourhood, talked about politics, family matters, hobbies. Guy died few months ago. He was not my best friend, not even a close acquaintance but seeing how insignificant his death was to any person on this planet (including - to some extent - his wife and children and grandchildren) I have started to doubt my purpose in life, which increased my overall anxiety. It's like mix of stress, low amount of sleep and midlife crisis (?) that kick me out of my orbit further and further from my old self-identity - I feel detached, like I was endlessly freefalling or flying in vast dark space forever. Yet I do not feel doubt, I do not feel lonely, I just stopped giving a fck about some of my old dreams, they are gone now. I have chosen my game and I need to play it until the end. There's no retreat and there's no point to run or hide from it as the consequences will be more painful than going further - but is it all there is here for us in this reality? Eat, sleep, work, reproduce, eventually die and decay. I feel in spite of anything I have achieved or may still achieve, that I do not really matter. That my worth is purely subjective to several persons in this world and aside of that, I am just a meatbag - whether I will get hit by a bus or crash my car and die or not - I am just a statistic and I can be described as a person belonging to some group of equally uninteresting persons if one will read only dry facts about me.

Perhaps trying to leave something for others (like a community, doing some pro bono job, giving money each month to animal shelters, nursing home or orphanage) will heal my soul? Do you often feel similar? How to get back this feeling that your own life is at least somewhat meaningful? That you are not another slowly-dying consumer of this world?

I am definitely not the person i was before starting my own family. But then, i also haven’t been the same person at 25 y.o compared to when i was 20, or 35/25 etc.
Men that don’t change, stopped to grow/evolve and you don’t want to be that man.

That said, having a family of your own to take care of, sets you on a certain road with certain crossings and turning left or right on one of them most of times means leaving family behind. In reality family life doesn’t leave us much of a choice if we want to keep it.
And in this regard i personally feel stuck. The only question everything seems to boil down to is if i want to see my kid every day or not and then i act accordingly.

As i answer the question with “yes” there is little other to do then to embrace having a life that feels remote controlled, at least for a large part.

Having experienced a lot of things in life, including having offspring, i have to say that almost everything becomes stale if i compare it to the love for my kid.

If you imagine losing your kid in some way, everything else feels kinda unimportant and replaceable. This of course makes me from time to time wonder what the real point of my life would be if ever anything (god forbid) happened to my kid.

I am an introvert and nothing loads up my batteries more than being my own magnificent company. I am doing okay with people but if i had the choice id spend at least 50% of my time alone. At this point i don’t have “ride or die” friends, which also makes me question who would actually miss me/come to my burial outside of my (blood) family.

Being someone that thrives to level up in many aspects of my life, i get motivation and joy by working on myself. Working on my body, my health, my financial independence, on becoming a fortress against whatever life or my government might throw at me and fighting against becoming the “old man”. Sometimes though, i ask myself for whom i really do all these things and what would it matter if i were just gone. And on other days i feel (like you) as if i am not doing enough on all fronts, chasing perfection as good as i can which also leaves me burnt out here and then.

When i look at my rather small family (parents, an aunt/uncle, 2 grandparents left) i get
so much melancholic vibes that it depresses me. These guys are between 65 and 95 years old and everyone laments that the old ones (Friends/Family) die and that they don’t have a connection/cant relate to the younger generations. I find the lack of any joy in their life depressing and while i see myself much more driven and interested in all kinds of activities i unfortunately can relate to their misery.

At these points i have to remind me that there is not a goal post somewhere down my lifeline but LIVING the lifeline and enjoying the ride as long as possible is the goal. For now, unfortunately, i dont allways convince me and still need to work on my mindset.

 

[Bokanovsky]

It's far more advisable to write several best-selling books, direct a series of groundbreaking films, build a highly lucrative business, or even fly a hijacked Boeing into a skyscraper filled with over 3,000 unsuspecting office drones, if "legacy" is what one prioritizes

That's not "legacy". That's vanity.

 

[BaronOfHair]

That's not "legacy". That's vanity.

Like "vengeance" and "justice", the two overlap in more ways than they differ