Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast, where we provide one lesson every single day to help you with your most important job, being a parent.

I'm Ryan Holiday, and I draw these lessons from ancient philosophy, modern psychology, practical wisdom, and insights from parents just like you all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

If not them, who?

We do our best to be good citizens, good colleagues, good people. We don't

freak out like some demonic Karen in a viral video when something goes wrong at the supermarket.

We follow the law. We help others when they need it. We try to practice the golden rule. Good, good,

good. But isn't it strange how much of this time and energy is spent externally out in the world?

Because at home we're so much less controlled and contained. We never get upset about an employee's

messy desk, but we nag our children about their room as if it was a reflection of their character.

We encourage our children's teammates and criticize the performance of our own

children. We insist our children respect our spouse and then we wait for them to go to bed and

fight nastily that same person. We're complicated, we're flawed, we're total hypocrites, aren't we?

Even the best of us are. As Lewis Fisher wrote of Gandhi, not unfairly, from young manhood he was

sweet and kind towards everybody except his wife and sons. Ouch. We talked about Anhele

Merkel's father recently. As a pastor, he had endless time and patient for his congregation,

but then came home tired and frustrated

and short with his own family. It can't work that way. Our family deserves the best of us,

the best treatment, not the remnants, not the apologies or the rationalizations of, oh, I'm having a

tough time at work. Who are we, Seneca said, if we rage and yell at good people. Certainly not a good

person ourselves. We owe our kids better. We owe our spouse better. We owe them what we owe everyone.

Sweetness, kindness, patience, help, respect, love. We owe it to ourselves to give it to them.

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