It should be easy. Unlike so much of what parenting asks of us, this isn’t adding anything to your plate. In fact, it’s the opposite.
But we struggle with it, don’t we? We struggle to be with our kids. Not in terms of making the time, but making the effort to actually be present when we’re with them.
We talked recently about the beautiful passage in Claire Keegan’s book Small Things Like These. Furlong, a father of five girls, is at home making sweets with the family…sort of. Actually, he’s planning out the week ahead. He’s solving work problems. His mind is elsewhere. His mind, like ours so often is, is at the office, even if he is at home.
“Always it was the same,” he observes, “always they carried mechanically on without pause, to the next job at hand. What would life be like, he wonders, if they were given time to think and reflect over things?”
Yeah, what would that be like? Might it be pretty incredible…or at least a relief? If you slowed things down. If you made some time and space for stillness. If you were actually with your family with you were with your family? It would be like actually living. It would be like actually being a parent. It would be like actually having a family.
That’s what it would be like. And that’s what you want it to be like, isn’t it?
P.S. Check out Ryan Holiday’s Stillness Is Key if you’re looking to learn how to cultivate this level of presence in your daily life and pass this skill on to your children. The book is full of both Stoic and Buddhist exercises for being more focused and in the moment—which, as we’ve mentioned before, is the greatest gift we can give our kids.
Head to the Daily Stoic Store today to get signed copies of Stillness Is The Key, and all of Ryan’s books on Stoicism—preorders now available for the wisdom book, by the way!
