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.

We are all the same. Nobody wants to be like their parents or the adults they remember growing up,

the ones who were clueless or uncool. The ones who seemed to forget what it was like to be a kid,

the one who rhapsodized about the good old days and the way things used to be. And we'd like to think

that we've succeeded in this mission in avoiding the curse of getting old and growing up basically.

Because we're younger, both in spirit and in mentality, because we have a new generation's understanding of this whole parenting thing, one that is informed by the exciting different industry that we work in, or the kind of political activism that we're

engaged with, or because of the self-improvement influencers we follow or the fact that we even know

what an influencer is at all. But here's the cold, hard truth. You are not different. You're like all

the other parents that have ever lived, just like your parents, truth. You are not different. You're like all the other parents that have

ever lived, just like your parents, even if you have made some critical improvement. The poet Audrey

Lord's children had to break this news to their parents. You think that just because you're lesbians,

they said, you're so different from the rest of them. But you're not, they told their moms. You're just like all the other parents. Audrey said, you're so different from the rest of them. But you're not, they told their moms. You're

just like all the other parents. Audrey and her partner had fancied themselves revolutionaries,

but where it mattered, they were as Ozzy and Harriet as everybody else. They were as old and

old-fashioned and ordinary and out-of-touch and conservative as everybody else who ever procreated. And so are you.

This isn't something to be ashamed of. It's just the reality of bringing life into this world,

of being responsible for young, vulnerable souls that can't fully take care of themselves yet.

It's what happens when you decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body, as the quote goes.

Once you stop fighting it, you can realize that it doesn't really matter.

You can stop putting an artificial distance between you and other parents, between you and your family.

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