My own two kids have been a huge blessing to me. They pulled me away from what would likely have become selfish bitterness, and long term failure. They offered a ready and appropriate place to pour my creative spirit and energies, and in eliciting this, made it available to me too. It wasn’t there before.
“Service” is another word that makes me cringe. It is used and abused all too often by imbeciles and cynics. But the spirit behind it is a wonderful one, and I would suggest the service mindset is a bit like the parenting one, not in the sense of being patronizing or protective, but in the sense of facilitating new births, new life.
We might even say true service is a creative art form. I believe this to be true. And I want to be clear that what is MOST important is inner hunger, inner pain, inner incompleteness. You can manage poverty with a rich inner spirit, just as you can be rich in money and wind up killing yourself.