There’s something that happens when you approach life from the other side. What other side? That side where you take the metaphorical step out of Plato’s allegorical cave and no longer view things from one ‘shackled’ perspective. That side where you release inherited beliefs and values and begin to choose the ones that truly resonate with your life in this moment.

 

It can be a cataclysmic occurrence. Or it can happen quietly and calmly. Whichever way it happens for you, it’s like a torrent of gushing water surging through a dried parched riverbed. It immediately soothes, nourishes and brings healing energy. It washes away the dried, shrivelled parts – the remnants of a life lived by someone else’s script. The freedom is elating.

 

How does this happen? We ask questions. Relentlessly. We go to spaces and places beyond the usual “we’ve always done it like this”. Children do this instinctively. Adults instinctively pull them back.

 

Not everyone needs to be a biological parent

 

My sentiment today may feel disingenuous as I’m a parent. One who deeply longed for that title. And I am forever honoured. But it’s exactly this experience that allows me to view it from the other side.

 

Parenthood comes to people in different ways – by choice, chance, or circumstance. Some yearn for it and are met with silence and immense pain. I have deep empathy for those. It’s taken away from some, brutally. A trauma I can only imagine.

 

Others decline it – for myriad reasons – carving out lives of depth and contribution beyond their wombs and sperm count. These are the ones I quietly revere – for their discernment, their devotion to another kind of legacy. They are also the most misunderstood.

 

Parenting is not a prize

 

There are 8 billion of us and so there can never be a single path or binary choice. Does every soul come into this world to procreate, give birth and parent? That can’t be logical. Here’s what I think.

 

Parenting is a sacred act of devotion which by nature, demands sacrifice. Time, energy, emotion, finances – and often, creativity – are redirected toward nurturing others. And while that’s noble, it can leave little room for the kind of generative thinking our society today desperately needs. We need a New Earth, as Eckhart Tolle so poignantly named it – and we’re not going to have it while masses are ensconced in doldrums of demands created by this left-hemisphere existence.

 

We need those who are not bogged down by school schedules, homework, playdates, and after-school activities to find endless moments of silence, to take a helicopter view of our societal dysfunction and help reimagine the systems that no longer serve us. We need those outside the parenting paradigm to be the dreamers, the builders, the emotional scaffolding.

 

Yes, those of us in the trenches are doing our best to change the narratives we find abhorrent and antiquated. But we need support from the unencumbered who – we hope – can come fresh and free with new perspectives and creativity to jolt us out of this weary, overburdened reality.

 

Love wherever you are

 

So, this is my love letter to those who are not parents. Not because you lack, but because you offer. You are not a footnote in the human story; you are its margin of possibility. You hold the space where new paradigms can be born. Where creativity is not rationed, and care is not confined. Your path is not lesser. It is liberated. It is life – unfolding, unbound. It is needed.

 

And perhaps, let’s retire the tired questions: When will you marry, have children, get a dog, settle down? They’re not just intrusive; they reveal how tightly we cling to scripts that no longer serve. How about: Have you found your passion/gift? How are you serving humanity? What new insight have you learned today?

 

Dear heart, there are other ways to live, to love, to belong. There’s another way to do this…