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.

No one has it better than you. Things could be so much better. This could be a world that takes care of parents and families. It could be a world with a better safety net. It could be a world where we don't shrug after a school shooting or has democracy as dismantled by fanatics and nut jobs. We could use more support. Inflation could come down. Your spouse could get their act together. Things could be better. They should be better.

So it can be frustrating to hear all this talk about gratitude.

You spent hours preparing for Thanksgiving and you already know your extended family isn't going to appreciate it.

And yet you're the one that's supposed to be grateful.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the writer Plutarch and his family were deep in

grief. They had lost a young child. Work and life and responsibilities loomed as they do for so many

of us. Gratitude was the furthest thing from their mind, but Plutarch caught himself. In a famous letter

he composed to his wife on grief, he would write as long as there are others who would gladly choose your fate, even including our present state. It is awful of you, the bearer of that fate, to complain and grumble. In a sense, he was searching for a way to be grateful, a perspective that allowed him to get outside the immediacy of his pain and anger and find a different

way to see it. As it happens, thinking about other people is almost always the way to do that.

How many people would trade places with you in a second? How many of them stay awake at night

dreaming for just one day of the peace and privilege you take for granted? Yeah, it's tough having a teenager, but some parents

will never get that. Yeah, your own parents or in-laws are frustrating, but again, coming out of the

pandemic, some people are sitting around deeply missing that frustration. Think of the citizens

of Ukraine, dodging missiles on the way to work or school. Think of the citizens of Russia,

fearing their tyrannical leader. Think of the families in Gaza and Israel, think of the citizens of Russia, fearing their tyrannical leader,

think of the families in Gaza and Israel, think of the people who are skrimping and saving just to put anything on their children's plates today.

There is so much to be grateful for every second, every minute we're alive.

The fact that we're alive is the very first thing, the fact that we know luxuries and technologies that our most recent ancestors couldn't even

imagine is another.

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