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.

It's always been like this.

There he walked along the trail carrying his young child pressed up against his side.

Sometimes the kid would get a burst of energy and call to be put down. I want to walk, I want to walk.

So the father would set the child down and they'd walk together hand in hand. Soon enough, they'd get tired again and need to be carried. Other times the father stopped briefly to readjust, putting the child down between his legs, then picking them up and switching

sides. Walk, rest, walk, rest. How long did it go on like this? What were their names? Where were

they going? We don't know because this utterly ordinary journey, one that you've experienced

yourself more times than you can count,

happened many thousands of years ago. The only record we have of it is a collection of fossilized

footprints etched into the sands of time over about a mile of dirt in what is now White Sands

National Park. It's really incredible. This was long enough ago that the footprints

stand beside those of giant sloths, and yet the scene is relatable and common enough that you may

have accidentally recreated it at the beach with your kids this summer. The archaeologists who

studied the prince note that they reflect a sense of urgency, too, that they would have

occurred at roughly four miles an hour. Was the parent trying to get home, to get to a doctor,

to get away from something, to get out of the sun, to get the kid somewhere to go down for

a net before the meltdown happened? We don't know. And yet, we know we've been there. This is

us. This is the journey we're on, that we're all on and always have been on.

As parents, as people, as human beings, we're connected.

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