They’re crazy. Your life is crazy. There’s a million places you have to be. There’s a million things you have to do. There’s so much you have to buy. This one needs new shoes. This one needs supplies for a project. This one’s got accepted to a prestigious school program and now you’ve got to work extra hours to pay for it.

It’s a lot. Your kids are a lot.

And yet somehow they also shrink your world and make it manageable, don’t they? On a podcast recently, Scott Galloway (you can listen to his episode on Daily Stoic here) talked about exactly this paradox. “It’s almost relaxing,” he said. “When I became a parent, all of a sudden the weekends were predictable. You know what you’re doing. You’re taking your kid to soccer practice and you’re going to some lame-ass birthday party on Sunday where you gather with all the other dads and just roll your eyes and say, ‘Jesus, how did we end up here?’ But it’s relaxing. It’s like, ‘Okay, I got something else that’s more important than me all the fucking time.’”

And that’s the key, isn’t it? In the middle of the busyness, in the chaos of it all, there’s a strange kind of stillness. A grounding. Because when life feels overwhelming, your kids have this way of pulling you back to what matters. They shrink your world, not in a limiting way, but in a way that simplifies it. They remind you of the beauty in the mundane and the meaning of the ordinary.

Of course it’s relaxing. Because in that stillness, you realize: this is enough. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. This is what it’s all about.

P.S. For more on this idea about finding stillness in the busyness, then check out Ryan Holiday’s Stillness Is Key. The book is a roadmap to finding calm and focus in one’s life and shows you how to create more moments in your life where stillness reigns. Grab your copy over at the Daily Stoic Store today!