Have Kids
A brief letter about unconditional love
Yesterday, my second born son held my hand for the first time—not the automatic grasp of a newborn, but a deliberate choice. That rush of unconditional love hit again.
You think you understand love before kids. You don't. Every other relationship comes with implicit conditions. Partners choose each other daily. Parents love you deeply, but there's history. With your child? It's different. It's a love so fundamental it becomes part of your operating system.
The surprises compound. Watching your partner become a parent shows you sides of them you never knew existed. You fall in love differently, deeper. Each 3 AM wake-up, each small sacrifice, becomes a window into your own childhood. Suddenly you understand your parents in ways no conversation could explain. That house full of love you grew up in? It was built in these exact moments, through these exact choices.
Before kids, I obsessed about protecting my time. Startup hours, ambitious goals, career growth—how could a child fit into that equation? But nothing transforms priorities like unconditional love. When every minute matters more, you waste fewer of them. Your ambitions don't shrink—they find their foundation.
I'm more ambitious now, not less. Kids don't limit your dreams—they force them to grow. They push you to scale professionally because they deserve your best, and personally because they're watching everything you do.
Most people think having kids means choosing between ambition and family. But the biggest paradox? Nothing fuels ambition quite like unconditional love.
When I became a first time father 4 years back, I have felt similar experience that is difficult to put in words. Rush of motivation and adrenaline, to do something big in life for my little one. But one caveat is, this energy should not confused to be directed at selfish needs( read selfish ambition). I slipped breifly, but came out of it quickly. Like LLMs, Little ones too operate on "Attention is all you need" + lots of play/care (PS: Love is foundation to these). We can never explain why these attention/play/care work together to form patterns in them. And even science proves it accurately that being more for your children when they are young has more benefiting impact over when they are in their teens. So design the life differently, based on our unique circumstances, without falling into blinded traps - would be something I keep weary of.