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.

Love is about service. Hemingway was not a great husband or as often as he should have been a great father.

He had four wives, at least one affair, and was often absent in his family's life, preferring to spend his time when he was not writing, big game hunting, deep sea fishing, bullfighting, and so on.

But he was a great writer and a great observer of the human condition. There are few

scenes in literature that capture love and loss and the terrifying but also inspiring moment of

becoming a father quite like the end of a farewell to arms. And nothing quite captures love like

this quote from it. When you love, you wish to do things for, you wish to sacrifice for,

you wish to serve. Isn't that what we're all doing as dads? We're asking that question that

Tom Hanks expressed almost as beautifully as Hemingway. What do you need me to do? You offer that up to

them. You offer that up to them. I will do anything I can possibly do

in order to keep you safe. That's it. Offer that up and then just love them. So think about that

today. Remind yourself of what love is, what your job is. You're here to serve, whether that's

driving them around or just listening to them talk. your job is to sacrifice to give what you didn't

get. Offer that up. Offer it always, even if they're not ready to take it, even if they don't

understand, even if you're not as good as you'd like to be. Just keep doing and keep serving.

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