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.

It doesn't matter if it's true. George Washington probably didn't chop down a cherry tree. Three hundred Spartans likely didn't

stop an invasion of hundreds of thousands of Persians. Of course, there was not actually a fox

who dismissed some grapes he couldn't reach as sour. Did Socrates actually say or do this or that, or all the stories about Jesus

true or Buddha or Confucius? Again, probably not. But then again, that was never really the

point. That's not why we tell fables, especially to children. Jesus himself spoke in parables,

you know, not because they were strictly true, but to teach

a lesson. Plutarch, whose epic but accessible biographies have been a staple of this genre and were

part of the education of many future great men and women when they were young was not exactly a stickler

for accuracy. Many of his anecdotes upon

closer inspection seem impossible, or at least impossible to verify. Still, it was often the

case he said that these fables took on the character of exact history by nature of their essence.

It was often the case he said that you could learn a lot more

about a person or a historical event from one apocrypal quote, one little detail, than from pages

of historical facts or figures. The role of a teacher then and now is not to cram our heads with

trivia. No, our job is to teach them the lessons they need to know in order

to be good people. The purpose of our fables and our stories, especially the old ones, is not

pedantic accuracy, but accurate insights about humanity and life. Let's stop getting so hung up on

whether this or that really happened. Let's focus on what it means. Let's stop getting so hung up on whether this or that really happened.

Let's focus on what it means.

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