Have you lived both lives and compared them then ?
I also feel I've lived both lives.
Like many who went off on the spiritual trail to the East in the 70s, staying in monasteries and ashrams - for 3 years in my case - but then returning to what we called "
The West" and eventually co-founding a successful small business, I was completely clear that I did
not want children in this life. The dharma - spiritual life - came first & having ended up living in the ashram of the infamous Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh in Poona, a life of worldly "celebration" a la "
Zorba the Buddha" was not seen to contradict this (I'm chuckling away to myself as I write
). I spent the next 20 years working and playing hard in London, going out with a stream of gorgeous women, yet meditating every day and never settling down in a relationship for more than 2 years. In 1996, I sold up and moved, after some 2 - 3 years globetrotting, to Italy, where I lived on the top floor of a 1920s palazzo with stunning views from its two terraces over the sea, my navy blue 911 C4 cabriolet parked in the drive. It was a wonderful, but I would now say selfish & arrogant, life (I do
not mean to say that those who choose not to have children are necessarily selfish and arrogant).
In early 2000, I made a trip to Australia and on the way back stopped off in India for a week to visit old friends (most of whom are childless) who still spend their winters at the same ashram. The first day, I met a very attractive, much younger German girl with a lovely smile and very beguiling laugh, & we had a very sweet one week holiday romance, full of laughter and, ahem, "yoga". We are very different people and neither of us intended the relationship to last longer than that week.
6 weeks later she called in a distressed state to tell me she was pregnant. I was shocked, as was she : it was a failure of contraception and not what either of us wanted or intended. We knew what different people we were, and beyond that hardly knew each other : our relationship began the day our daughter, India, was born, just over 19 years ago. We stayed together 15 years and the best thing I can say about my ex-wife is that if I had met her when I was 38 instead of 48 I would have liked to have had 4 children with her (I notice she rolls her eyeballs when I say this) ! For me, parenthood has been a wonderful blessing for which I am so very grateful : total stress on the one hand, but an otherwise unknowable joy on the other.
Sorry for the long post, I got a bit carried away !