Finding Meaning Beyond “Fun”: Wanderlust, Parenthood, and Mindful Joy

For most of our marriage, my partner and I wore the label “wanderers.” 🧳 We backpacked across Southeast Asia, surfed in Portugal, pitched tents in Maine, rumbled down California’s coast on motorcycles, and honeymooned among New Zealand’s fjords. Each trip crackled with novelty and left us glowing with fresh stories.

But life pivoted when our first child arrived. 👶🏽➡️🌍 A pandemic-era shutdown forced us to cancel her first-birthday bash, and—without realizing it—our passports went dormant. Another baby followed. Travel shrank to nostalgia, revisited only through dog-eared journals—until urgent cries yanked us away for yet another diaper change.

Exhausted Millennial Parents

Last fall we finally tested the waters again, flying to visit friends in Austin with two kids under five. ✈️ The “sun-soaked” escape from chilly Boston greeted us with drizzle and 60 °F. Nap schedules chained us to stroller-friendly loops, and on night two our daughter unleashed a scene worthy of The Exorcist—projectile vomit, midnight screams, and me scrubbing carpets in bleary disbelief. Fun, right? 🤢🧹

That question echoed ones I ask on Zen retreats, where hours of chores and aching knees prompt similar doubts. Yet I return again and again, calling the experience “hard but good.” Austin felt the same.

Around the kitchen table, our fellow parent-friends introduced the idea of “type-two fun.” 🏞️ It’s the satisfaction that blooms after you’ve slogged through five muddy miles in freezing rain. Maybe parenting belongs in this category—part challenge, part unexpected reward.

Years of diapers and meditation cushions have taught me that neither Buddhism nor child-rearing guarantees nonstop delight. Moments of bliss share space with boredom, mess, and minds that wander like toddlers in a toy aisle. 🧘‍♂️🍼

Social feeds sell a highlight-reel version of happiness, but chasing constant thrills can seed restlessness. I once fled vague discontent on every flight; the chase never ended.

Buddhist scholar Andrew Olendzki reminds students to meet every emotion with equanimity—joy, sorrow, pleasure, pain. 🌗 When expectations collide with reality, meditation lets us see the gap and soften around it.

Parenting and mindfulness both trade quick highs for deeper growth. They pull us beyond self-interest, teaching compassion in the trenches. My daughter’s night of vomiting certainly wasn’t “fun,” but kneeling beside her, present and caring, carved a memory far richer than another postcard sunset. The journey was messy, exhausting—and utterly worthwhile. 💗