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 dad must think the unthinkable.

It's fitting that one of the most important things you could do as a parent would require you to think about a thing that's very nearly impossible for a parent to even consider.

It comes to us from Marcus Aurelius by way of Epoctetus.

As you kiss your son, good night, says Epictetus, whisper to yourself,

he may be dead in the morning. Don't tempt fate, you say, by talking about a natural event,

is fate tempted when we speak of grain being reaped? Of course, this is not an easy thing to do. It goes against all of our impulses, but we must do it.

Because life is fleeting and the world is cruel.

Marcus Aurelius lost five children, five.

Seneca, we gather, lost one early too.

It should never happen, but it does.

It heartbreakingly, world-wreckingly, nobody deserves it does.

At my ranch here in Texas, we've got about 40 or so acres, which I don't obviously manage the way

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