Welcome to the Daily Dad podcast where we provide one lesson every day to help you with your most

important job being a dad. These are lessons inspired by ancient philosophy, by practical

wisdom, and insights from dads all over the world.

Thank you for listening, and we hope this helps.

You've got to live up to your standards.

It's a touching scene. The father in the road is giving the

last bit of hot chocolate he had found to his son. He pretends to make himself a little, but really

he's giving it all to the boy who is by this point just skin and bones. But he can't quite pull it off.

You promised not to do that. The boy said, what? You

know what, Papa, he said. I have to watch you all the time, the boy said. I know if you break

little promises, the boy said, you'll break the big ones. That's what you said. What father

wouldn't have done the same for their son? We put their health over ours in a heartbeat,

but that's not really the point of today's email. Because the kid is right, and he's the little fellow

naively chiding his father with his own advice. And that's really the message of the road. For the

entirety of his short life, his father has talked to the boy about the things

we talk to our kids about, honesty, fairness, kindness, courage, love. And now, at the end of the

world with their lives on the line, all those lessons are playing out with stakes almost beyond

comprehension. It would have been so easy to be selfish to throw the rules out the

window to blow off the little promises, but you can't, just as we can't right now in the middle

of this pandemic with all we have going on. Now is the time to show up. Now is the time to keep our

word to show that we really meant what we said all these years,

that these aren't just idle words that we live by. We have to show that we keep the little

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