On Regrets

What about you, asked Anni. Do you have regrets?

Of course, I said.

What?

I hesitated.

Sometimes, I said, I regret having kids.

-

The next morning, I came down the stairs bleary-eyed and weary-limbed, still a bit ill from chickenpox. Rahi sat the kitchen table earnestly making shapes on a piece of coloured paper. Papa, he said. Paaa-pa. For you!

He had made me breakfast and a note to go with it because I was ill. The paper was yellow and the letters were fat and clumsy. The apples were in large chunks, as though someone had hacked at them with unpracticed movements.

I never eat breakfast. I dislike it. I sat down and ate up the bowl. I cannot remember a tastier breakfast, or a more beautiful piece of writing.

-

I lay in bed. I heard Rahi clattering down the stairs and Anaya making noises.

Ah, fuck, I thought.

More clatter, more noises.

No, I thought. I don’t want to feed you.

I didn’t even think of trying to explain or defend or rationalise that. It was pure desire, very clearly felt. I just didn’t want to feed them.

I don’t want to get up and work to earn money to pay for their lives, I thought.

I just want to stay in bed and maybe spend a few hours on my phone looking at whether the internet has changed since I last looked at it. Then I want to sleep again. Then I want to wake up and not cook or work or clean or do anything for my kids. Or for anyone else.

Paaaaaa-pa, came the cry. I went downstairs.

-

I have, or rather I had, artistic ambitions. I wanted to write great novels.

I have, or rather I had, philosophical ambitions. I wanted to revitalise philosophy.

I have, or rather I had, spiritual ambitions. I wanted to become enlightened.

I rarely mentioned these ambitions to other people; if I did, it was with self-deprecation and irony. But I didn’t have these ambitions self-deprecatingly or ironically. I had them for real, and I had made some major changes in my life for their sake.

I quit a safe and secure job as an academic for their sake. I felt, without being able to articulate, that to stay in academia would be to imprison and ultimately destroy myself. I was right, and so I was right to leave.

For a while, I kept trying to somehow pursue those ambitions of mine. For quite a few years, actually. But around the start of this year, I gave up. Not deliberately, not in any dramatic or intentional way. Just, I have had to confront the realities of my life; or at least, what I take to be the realities of my life.

There isn’t enough time to earn money, take care of my kids, be a good-ish husband, and do all the other shit that goes into being a good and responsible person - and keep pursuing my ambitions alongside. Not enough time, and not enough energy, either. I tried 100 hour weeks for a couple of years, and I don’t have it in me to keep doing that.

-

If I didn’t have kids, I told Anni, I’d spend a few hours a week working, earn my 1500 euros a month, and spend the rest of my time and energy on the things I really want to do.

-

It is an odd thing, to love two human beings with a depth and an intensity and a tenderness that is for me unparalleled, and to also sometimes wish you’d never had occasion to feel that love.

It’s an odd thing, to have two human beings in your life who fill you with an inexpressible delight, who give you daily moments of laughter, of a love in which everything melts and flows and gently sparkles - and to sometimes regret that you helped make them.

-

The other morning, my mind perpetrated a thought.

It’s done, it said. These ambitions of yours, these artistic, philosophical, spiritual ambitions - they ain’t happening, brother.

(My mind often speaks in weird accents and dialects, but fundamentally has a good heart.)

Thanks, I said. Merry Christmas to you too.

My mind shrugged, a feat you wouldn’t have thought possible for an essentially imaginary entity, and definitely a being without a material body.

It is what it is, bro. You gots kids.

Can you please stop speaking in that ridiculous way? You went to Oxford. You read Spinoza for pleasure. You’ve never actually said bro in your life.

Whatever, bro. Don’t take out your frustration on me.

Are you going to say something useful, I asked, or are you just fucking around?

Mainly fucking around, it said, but I did actually have a thought that I wanted to share with you.

What?

There’s only one place left in your life, bud. It’s here. It’s your kids, it’s your family, it’s Anni. It’s relationships and love. Whether you like it or not, whether you regret it or not - there is only one ambition left that you can realistically pursue.

What’s that, bro?

It’s the ambition of love. You can try, if you want, to live a life of love with your wife, your kids, your family, your friends.

That’s it. That’s all that’s left.

Strangely, that somehow cheered me up.

Thanks bro, I said.

Now go away, said my mind. I have thoughts to think.