[greygoo222]

If you had kids earlier, you wouldn't get more time with the specific person you love that is your son, you'd get more time with a different son. No doubt you'd love your counterfactual son too. But you shouldn't feel bad for having done any wrong by your real kid. This is the only timeline he could exist in.

Bit of a thorny philosophical argument, maybe, but reasonable in this case.

[conductr]

Have considered that as well but shared time with that person would have been more and I would be none the wiser to the actual timeline, so I feel it’s appropriate to treat them as the same “child” instead of theoretical kid vs actual kid and how I’m happy I waited because this kid is so cool, pretty sure I would have felt the same towards the other kid (who knows maybe not but even if he was a jerk of a kid I’d assume a delayed child would have also been a jerk too)

[1659447091]

> ...but shared time with that person would have been more

Sticking to the philosophical arguments, having the kid at any other time, even earlier would not guarantee more time with them. It would have drastically shifted your life events which could include ones that possibly shorten it.

[conductr]

Time and guarantees are oil and water, it’s without saying. I don’t even know if you’ve lived long enough to witness this message I’m writing. I’m writing it anyway.

Maybe he was born 10 years earlier and I die in a car crash on the way to the hospital. It’s possible of course I only am alive because I wasn’t on the way to the hospital. While I agree with you on a philosophical point, sure, the fact is I was the one actively choosing to not have kids yet and waiting for some later date. So, I was in much more control of the situation than this philosophical hypothetical or alternate timeline. So, having regret or sharing what I learned from choices I have made still seems like the best choice. I don’t live by thought exercises.

[1659447091]

> I don’t live by thought exercises.

But you live with regret and rumination and thinking up possible future scenarios; that and "living by thought exercises" are two sides of the same coin -- if not the same side. Which is what the argument was meant to playfully point out, in its round-a-bout philosophical way. You can get up to thinking of all the sci-fi timeline altering stuff of the past the same as you can carry regret from thought exercises directed toward future events, thus getting in your feels and self-berating.

It is all thought exercises. The other option is to release the burden of guilt and simply enjoy the timeline you have now. Kids sense these things that their parents carry. Anyway, in no way was I implying your experience or feelings or sharing is wrong or judged