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.

What would you give then? They're noisy, they're messy, they do not listen. You love them, of course, but secretly you sometimes look forward to it all being over.

When they stop calling for you in the middle of the night, when they stop asking you to drive them everywhere, when they move out and you get your house back.

This is why it's such a relief when they go and visit their grandparents, when summer ends, when they're playing down the street.

Truthfully, they exhausted me.

One of the characters says of her kids in Meg Mason's wonderful novel, U.B. Mother,

I spent years wishing they'd go and slam someone else's door.

Like all parents seeking a way to cope, she talks about how she made the choice to send them to

a school in the city instead of close by, in part for the better education, but also because it meant

they'd be gone for more time during the day. But like all of us, one day she gets all the quiet

she ever wanted and more. She buries one of her boys. The rest of the children grow up

and move out, cross the ocean. Ha! she tells her neighbor with a young baby, what I'd give for a

slamming door now. Someday, perhaps very soon, we would give anything for today. It will be too

late then, though, to appreciate what we had.

We can only do it now, no matter how loud, how messy, how onerous it may seem.

We have it now, as noisy and messy as it is.

Enjoy it. Love it.

Appreciate it.

I mean that.

This is my second or third recording of this email because first someone needed me to come wipe their butt and then someone needed me to fix their iPad, which was just unplugged. But that's how

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