“Why? Why? Why?” your child asks, and you don’t know the answer. Your task as a parent is to keep human life going a little longer, but sometimes you find yourself wondering, what’s so great about human life? Why do we need more of it? Raising kids makes this feeling more acute. Not just because you’re at the point where most of the exciting things you once imagined the future had in store for you—oh, the places you’ll go, etc.—are either in the past or never happened at all. But also because as a parent you are thrown daily into a state of mere being, of existing for hours at a time devoid of any goals other than passing the time. Look at the vacant expression of a typical parent at a playground following their kids up and down the ramps and ladders of the jungle gym. This is life absent a higher purpose or plot, aimed only at perpetuating itself. You could say parents are like Sisyphus, except their role is less heroic. Replace his mountain with a mini-slide, his rock with a rubber ball, and the parent is the one who has to stand nearby and make sure he doesn’t break his neck so he can keep bringing the ball back to the top of the slide and watching it roll down over and over again.