There’s so much to manage. So much to worry about. In a way, being a person is exhausting, isn’t it?

You have potential to maximize. You have your health to take care of. There’s the concerning direction of the world, the legacy you hope to leave, the memories you feel like you should be making, the general feeling you should be doing more.

There’s a kind of narcissism to all this, a self-obsession that wears us down. And although parenting certainly adds a lot to our plate, it’s also massively clarifying. It cuts through all the noise, cuts down the sheer amount of time we have to obsess and compare.

“It’s not all about you,” Ezra Klein recently said. “And that’s, I guess, maybe one of the really great joys of parenting. It makes you see that it’s not all about you.”

Parenting, if we let it, pulls us out of our heads and into the present. When a child needs you, there’s no time to spiral about your own worries, no room to obsess over status, ambition, or your latest existential crisis. You’re too busy tying shoes, wiping tears, making snacks, answering endless questions. Parenting demands presence and patience. It demands us to set aside our feelings of self-importance and instead give ourselves fully to another.

Over time, that need to prove ourselves, all those things we once agonized over, it all fades away. What matters, we realize, is right there in front of us. And it’s more than enough.