For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.
Most people aren't unsuccessful in life because they don't know what to do. They are unsuccessful because they don't DO what they know how to do. Knowledge is power IF...you use it.
It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and frenetic pursuit of wealth.
Superior technical achievements - used correctly both strategically and tactically - can beat any quantity numerically many times stronger yet technically inferior.
Contentment is never the outcome of fulfillment, of achievement, or of the possession of things; it is not born of action or inaction. It comes with the fullness of what is, not in the alteration of it.