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.

This is a violent river. Sometimes it feels like it, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it feels like our lives are moving

very quickly, but often in the day-to-dayness, it doesn't. We're going from appointment to

appointment, practice to practice, living from school break to school break, moving towards each

milestone and grade level and accomplishment. In meditations, Marcus Aurelius, a father of many

to say the least, reminds himself not to get lost in this, to lose the perspective of what is

happening. Time is a river, he writes, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and then

already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.

And like a river, it is heading towards a final destination we should remember, often at speeds

and with a force that would seem incomprehensible to a person simply observing it from the banks.

Our kids are being pulled away from us inexorably, their childhood being pulled away from

them. We are ourselves being pulled towards old age, towards our inevitable mortality as well as being

pulled towards adversity and difficulties we cannot even yet conceive of, because that's what life has in store for all of us.

We are not in control. We are powerless to stop it. All we can do is keep track of it. All we can do

is respect it as we do a river or any body of water. Dangers lurk. Pay attention. All we can do is appreciate the majesty of it, the

beauty and the grace around us. All we can do is go along for the ride. That is life. Let's make

sure we parent and live accordingly. Keep in mind how fast things pass by and are gone,

those that are now and those to come.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Daily Dad podcast. You can get this via email every day as well

at Daily Dad.com. Please get this via email every day as well at DailyDad.com.

...