In our culture, we're socialized to minimize our "self." Your life is defined by the roles you play in the extended family at various stages of life: child, father, etc. You spend a life laboring to provide for your kids, and the reward at the end is raising your grandkids and sharing their joy as they experience everything in the world for the first time through fresh eyes. It completes the cycle of life. If you don't have grandkids, you're stripped of purpose and robbed of your reward.

I can understand at an intellectual level that other people are raised differently and probably have a different emotional reaction, and, at an intellectual level, I understand that viewpoint is valid. But I genuinely cannot put myself in that mindset. The idea that you could live a fulfilling life without grandkids is predicated on being something I don't know how to be.