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.

A 10-year-old Jim Lawson was walking down the street when as he passed a car, a small child looked

at him, called him the N-word. Stunned by the hate and the he passed a car, a small child looked at him, called in the

N-word, stunned by the hate and the meanness of it, Lawson reached into the car and slapped the boy

in the face. When his mother found out about this, she was understandably worried. In the then-segregated

and racist South, the actions of a young black boy could so easily lead to something terrible and tragic

at the hands of awful and unaccountable adults. But more than that, she wanted her son not to be

defined or changed by all the hate of the world around him. What good did that do, Jimmy? His mother

asked him, we all love you, Jimmy, she said, and God loves you. And we all believe in you

and how good and intelligent you are. We have a good life and you are going to have a good life.

She said, with all that love, what harm does one stupid insult do? It's nothing, Jimmy. It's empty.

Just ignorant words from an ignorant child who has gone from your life the moment it was

said. It was a life-changing experience, David Halberstam explains in his book, The Children. And it

put Jim Lawson onto his world-changing path of nonviolence. It helped him to realize that he was

above the horrible things that other people said and did,

and that what mattered, as the Stokes would say, was what he said and did.

What mattered was responding with kindness and love.

What mattered was knowing that he was good and that he was lucked and that nothing anyone else thought could change that.

Lawson's parents gave him the gift of teaching him after that understandable

lapse that he was bigger than the small people that lived around him, that he could be the bigger

...