Babysit for one evening and you’ll come home with a sudden urge to thank your parents for roughly fifteen years.

One evening of it makes the arithmetic real. Three hours of feeding, refereeing, bathing and negotiating with a small person who has no interest in your plans, and you arrive at the end genuinely tired, having covered a single evening. Multiply that by every evening of your life so far and the number stops being abstract. Nobody can explain that to you. You have to feel the three hours.

Babysit for one evening this week. Afterward, say thanks with the number attached, because the number is the part that lands.