A lot of careers have very effective feedback loops for telling you that you're progressing, while being almost completely silent on whether the destination is one you actually want
Genetically if you don't have kids you are a dead end. You career will have some bearing on the life you give you kids (if you have any, I'm not trying to say you should!) but otherwise I believe it should stay out of your kids life.
Similar to the above, most people live with a married spouse (common law marriage: a legal marriage is not required for this discussion, though it may or may not matter for other purposes). While many people do meet their spouse through their career this is not required and the career itself has nothing to say about it. (historically kings and queens did marry for career reasons)
Note that both kids and a spouse implies you shouldn't allow your career to take up too much time even though many will try to.
Many people have hobbies. Even if you love the things you do at work, odds are your mind cannot handle doing it once you are done with work: your career cannot tell you anything about them. There are many people who pick a career because the things like love cannot support the life they otherwise want to live: their career can't tell them about the destination because it is purely something they do to get there.
All of this is to say that even if your career would offer you help on the destination, you should ignore it.
And when you contribute to a societey that overproduces resources, thrives scientifically and does not carry a load of parasites, then your career actions may push the cohort fitness.
This of course implies that the offspring of dedicated focus personal has desert flower traits- meaning every offspring will be dumb as a rock, and pro at procreation. Meaning clever people will have "Hippie" pregnant machine offspring and the "spiritual" birth-machines will have hyper-analytical "dead-enders". None of them happy with the state of the world.
Life as they say- finds a way- to make you despair with the result of the affair.
When I read your comments above I feel you have the desperate need to go hug a tree. Try it, it may work wonders.
(And I mean all that in the most positive way possible.)
In fact, beyond a certain level (which is not that high), income level and happiness are not correlated anymore. In other words, investing energy into increasing income does at that point rarely result in more happiness. So, why do it, especially if that energy could go more directly into activities that actually increase happiness?