Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you

with your most important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy,

by practical wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

How you see it matters.

There's stuff that happens that nobody wants to have happen, especially to their kids.

Whether it's breaking an arm or being bullied, life visits things upon us, things that frustrate,

things that hurt, things that cause problems. While we never choose for these things to happen,

we have to remember when they do happen,

we still retain some choice. We choose how we see them. We choose the story we tell ourselves about

them. And this is one of the things we have been talking about in regards to the pandemic.

Too many parents are choosing to see that their children have been harmed,

be it by distance learning or not seeing their grandparents. Of course, these events are undesirable.

There are consequences too, but harmed? This is a subjective word. This is a choice.

As Marcus Aurelius reminds himself, the more you see yourself

as harmed, the more you have been. Choose to see events differently, and the logic holds true too.

Have your children been affected by what's happened? By having to change teachers mid-year because

you moved, by having glasses, by the divorce,

by their learning issues? Yes. And it would be dishonest to claim otherwise. But negatively

affected, that's up to you. It's up to you to decide how to see it. And more important,

it's up to you to decide how to respond. We decide whether we're harmed or whether we use

something as a growing opportunity. We decide whether we are pulled apart or come together because of

...