The easiest way to manage in this vale of tears is to live frugally. Have a small apartment. Get your furniture from the charity shops. Have a few things: make do. Do not buy a good car. But… that is fairly easy if you are single. But not if you have kids. You start worrying about school zones. The wife wants things pretty. And the job becomes important, which means the car has to be reliable, and that generally means newer.

You then find yourself in the mortgage trap: although your life appears better and your lifestyle richer, your debts are much, much greater. You possessions start to rule you. And that is before I mention my besetting weakness for accumulating gear.

Or my continual worries: for my children, grandchildren, and those whom I love. The single, the atomized have fewer worries. Perhaps. But we all need people in our life, and secular monasticism does not work around children.

Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

(1 Corinthians 7:25-31 ESV)

I need to say that it is no sin to marry the woman you are betrothed to, or wife up the man you are engaged to. It is better to marry than burn. And a good wife also knows how to live pretty: home making is a skill, and saves money: home schooling removes the need to be in good school zones, and the caring of the frail and elderly is better not outsourced to a corporation.

But if you are not single you will worry. If you have children you will worry.

And you may take these things to God in prayer, but worry you will nonetheless.

Know this, however. Your possessions and status do not follow us to the grave. It is better to spend this life on influencing those around us so that they glorify God. To build truly, beautifully, and let not the lies of this world ensnare us. It is far better to love the imperfect who are close than shun them, for the sake of those far away. Virtue signalling is not virtue: possessions are not contentment.

And the single are not broken. You do not need to procreate to be fruitful. Those who can spend greater time with God than us with kids should pray that we forget not God as we work through our long list of tasks. That we will not let our worries rule us, but understand that the seasons of our life exist. And that we will be content to live plain.