The Importance of Suffering

Kevin Smith: I feel like into society right now, we are taught not to have this emotion. He says the only reason the line feels blurry is that no one's ever taught us how to deal with negative emotions. "There's a fine way between regret and rumination," he says. 'It's very easy to set too far one way'

Transcript

chevron_right

Play full episode

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

Over the two-and-a-half years I’ve been writing The New Fatherhood, I’ve had conversations with some great thinkers and doers that have made me consider fatherhood, and my experience of being a dad, in a new light. I’ve featured some of these exchanges in the newsletter before, but thanks to recent advances in AI I’ve been able to take old recordings and whip them up into near-studio quality.

As a parent, I know your time is precious, and am grateful for every minute you spend here. I wanted to find a way to share these interviews in a fatherhood-friendly way—because ain’t nobody got time for a two-hour unedited conversation. After reading the average school run was 28 minutes long, I’m aiming for each episode to hit this length. That way, you should be able to fit it in whilst on your way home, or to work, after dropping off the kids. Each discussion will come with a companion essay, which can always be found at https://www.thenewfatherhood.org/podcast

We're opening this series with author Daniel H. Pink. Our conversation was recorded early last year after the release of his wonderful book The Power of Regret, which invited readers to consider this often-maligned emotion in a new light. I’ve got more episodes in the can that will be gracing your ears soon, covering the same topics we regularly return to here. You can expect one new episode every month—that feels like a cadence that won’t destroy me?!—and I’m beyond excited to share them with you. A very special thank you to Max McCabe who is taking the reins on the audio production and killing it right out of the gate.

Quotes:

"Parenting is offering something beyond hedonic pleasure-driven satisfaction. It's delivering something more important, it's delivering meaning, it's delivering purpose, it's delivering love." - Daniel Pink

"Very few people regretted having a kid even though we know from other research that when we have kids, that when we're raising kids, you know, the first 20 years or so that having kids actually reduces our day-to-day hedonic satisfaction and well-being." - Daniel Pink

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction and Kevin Maguire's admiration for Pink's work.

00:54 - The scientific approach to understanding regret.

08:22 - Few people regret having children despite challenges.

09:44 - Rarity of regrets about not having children.

10:06 - Confessions of marital infidelity from submissions to the World Regret Survey.

13:37 - Educational divide and its impact on parenting styles.

15:01 - Encouragement to take action and try new things as a parent.

15:32 - The importance of a slight bias for action.

16:20 - Challenges and considerations in deciding to have children.

16:33 - Comparing regrets of bad marriages to regrets of having children.

Key Links