Where To Find The Reward

All the time. All the money. All the sleepless nights. All the arguments. All the messes you cleaned up. All the yelling you had to endure.

This took a toll didn’t it? It was painful. It was exhausting. The thanks for it are sporadic at best.

Is the reward supposed to be that they grow up and be successful? Are you supposed to wait for their high school graduation or their wedding to feel like it was all worth it?

No, the way to feel the rewards for all this, is day to day. In the little moments. The garbage time. The little experiences.

“Think about someone you love and how happy you are for the experiences they have,” Ezra Klein recently explained. “The sympathetic joy you have for them. I think about the way my mom is excited for the experiences I have. A lot of the joy of parenting is not the joy of parenting. It’s the joy of your child’s existence.”

We have to look for this, day to day. We find it in their delight biting an apple or jumping into the pool. We find it in their giggles when hiding behind the curtains or catching snow on their tongue. We find it in their awe watching a ladybug crawl across their finger or blowing on a dandelion and making a private wish. Really, we find it in all those wonderful moments we witness where they get to discover the joy of being alive. Because it’s those moments that remind us of our real reward—the gift we got to give to them.

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