Well, first let me say that being a parent is the best thing in my life (and there is a lot of very good stuff in my life), so don't over-index on what I'm about to say next. You'll be fine and better for it!
You might have heard the quote "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."
YMMV but the lowest of the low are the times when you feel the reality that you have become utterly, completely, impossibly vulnerable in a way that you've never felt before. Speaking for myself, I haven't loved anything in my life even remotely closely to how I love my kids. Closest thing is my wife (and I really love her).
You go from... not wanting your plane to crash because, you know, it would suck to die and your spouse would be wrecked... to... my kids will grow up without me there to teach them, keep them safe, show them love. The angst I feel towards that is about 10000x worse than in how I thought about dying before kids.
Heck even your understanding of "my parents would be sad if I died as a 30-year-old man" changes. No parent should ever have to outlive their child.
Every headline that right now seems like a "sad story" - a parent losing a child, a child losing a parent, kids in cages, a daughter and father who are estranged, etc -- becomes an absolutely wrenching sadness if you even FLIRT with the idea of "what if that happened to me/my child"? You develop sensitivities that you are surprised at. You realize you have inherited an impossible and awesome responsibility of providing for, protecting, loving little blank slates of humanity... in a chaotic and dangerous world.
There's no answer to it except to do your best, and hope/pray that you never have to face the unfaceable.
That feeling isn't always present. But that's the dark shadow that occasionally crosses the sun.
Oh and BTW - this love doesn't just magically appear for everyone right away. I know lots of fathers especially who don't feel much right away, but as you see your children go from blobs to little people, you fall in love with them. So don't sweat asking yourself if you're feeling it. Just let it happen. :)
Agreed 100%. Occasionally my wife and I will be watching something that features some violence or threat to children and we just look at each other like "why are we voluntarily watching this and vicariously feeling these things?" and shut it off.
Clearly people get desensitized to it, both as viewers and as writers. Christopher Nolan, for instance, is a parent but all of his movies have tough child dynamics (e.g. Inception and Leo's character trying to see his kids again).
Maybe by writing stories like that you can exorcise the demon a bit?
Hell, we just adopted a kitten 4 months ago, and the realization that he'll die in 15 years or so absolutely devastated me to the point that I started crying. He ate a (plastic) feather from one of his toys last week and I couldn't sleep that night (and kept checking on him) because I was afraid it would rupture his stomach or intestines and he'd die. I imagine these sorts of feelings are magnified a thousandfold when it's a human child.
The bad stuff is just a consequence of loving someone in a very deep way.
I don't think I can define the "value of love" beyond saying that the upside is fairly basic stuff - fulfillment, joy, affection, pride, self-discovery, character building from not putting yourself first and from serving others, etc.
This deep connection is the good stuff. The really bad stuff is learning to let go of your kids, watching this connection change and hoping that it changes into something even deeper.
You might have heard the quote "To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken."
YMMV but the lowest of the low are the times when you feel the reality that you have become utterly, completely, impossibly vulnerable in a way that you've never felt before. Speaking for myself, I haven't loved anything in my life even remotely closely to how I love my kids. Closest thing is my wife (and I really love her).
You go from... not wanting your plane to crash because, you know, it would suck to die and your spouse would be wrecked... to... my kids will grow up without me there to teach them, keep them safe, show them love. The angst I feel towards that is about 10000x worse than in how I thought about dying before kids.
Heck even your understanding of "my parents would be sad if I died as a 30-year-old man" changes. No parent should ever have to outlive their child.
Every headline that right now seems like a "sad story" - a parent losing a child, a child losing a parent, kids in cages, a daughter and father who are estranged, etc -- becomes an absolutely wrenching sadness if you even FLIRT with the idea of "what if that happened to me/my child"? You develop sensitivities that you are surprised at. You realize you have inherited an impossible and awesome responsibility of providing for, protecting, loving little blank slates of humanity... in a chaotic and dangerous world.
There's no answer to it except to do your best, and hope/pray that you never have to face the unfaceable.
That feeling isn't always present. But that's the dark shadow that occasionally crosses the sun.
Oh and BTW - this love doesn't just magically appear for everyone right away. I know lots of fathers especially who don't feel much right away, but as you see your children go from blobs to little people, you fall in love with them. So don't sweat asking yourself if you're feeling it. Just let it happen. :)