Of course, you love your spouse. You love your friends. You love your dog too. But there’s no one you love as much as your kids.
How do you know? Look at what you’d do for them.
In his new tour, the comedian Hasan Minaj tells a story about taking his young daughter to school picture day. She had a runny nose and was having trouble wiping it. The next thing he knew, he found himself sucking the snot out of his daughter’s nose with a Starbucks straw. As the sheer disgustingness of the moment hit him, so did another thought: I would never do this for my wife.
We’d do a lot for a spouse, for our parents, even for a stranger in need. We would do anything for our kids, because they didn’t do anything to deserve being thrust into existence, completely helpless to start, entirely dependent on us for years.
They didn’t choose to be here on this earth. They didn’t choose us to be their parents. We chose to have them. We made them. They are not just part of our lives, they are part of us. They are of us.
There is something about this relationship that softens the hardest head and warms the coldest heart. And the relationship changes over time, obviously. Hasan will not be sucking snot through straws a few years from now, but what will not change is the urge and the willingness to do anything for our kids.
