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.

Only they can say. Gandhi was a saintly man, but he was not a particularly great father. He was too demanding of his children, too controlling, too quick to push them away when they were not exactly what he wanted them to be, which is impossible.

It is sad that a man who was so kind and patient and forgiving such a father figure to so many could not be

those things for the people who loved him most, who most deserved that from him. But this is why we

study the lives of the greats and the not-so-grates. They provide us lessons, both inspiring and cautionary.

Gandhi's great biographer, Ramashandran Guha, captures many of these lessons in his books like Gandhi Before India and Gandhi the years that changed the world.

He also tried to integrate them into his own life along with the lessons of his own parents.

We have a great episode with him over on the Daily Stoke podcast, which you can check out.

But in an interview about his books with The Week back in 2022,

he explained that he himself was not a perfect father. If you have spent so much time on your work,

he said, you have probably not spent enough time with your children. Of course, I am attached to them.

He said, I speak to them every day when they are not in the same town. I am not an awful or a

negligent father. I have not an awful or a negligent father.

I have not ill-treated or beaten them. My father, on the other hand, he said, was an exemplary father.

He did not work as hard as me and he spent a lot of time with his children. But how I have been as a father is for my children to say.

All I can tell young people is that when you find a romantic partner, do not be

restricted by caste, religion, language, or sex, but try to find someone who has slightly different

interests than yours, and it will be mutually enriching. That has been my experience. We just have to

keep trying our best, is one way to think about it. We have to try our best to learn

to grow and to change, and only they can say whether we succeeded. Whatever you've got going on

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