One thing you quickly learn about being a parent is that your opinions, your limitations are irrelevant. Oh, you’re exhausted and need to sleep? Well, if your kid isn’t asleep, you’re not sleeping. Oh, you’d rather not work and would prefer to live on a beach somewhere? Cool, tell that to your mortgage payments and medical bills.
Parenting just demands so much more of you, just more than you ever even thought yourself capable of giving. You do it because you want to, because you love them, of course, but also because you have no choice. This just is what it is.
We have to remember that, especially lately. The fact that you’re done with COVID-19 doesn’t mean it’s done with you. The fact that you’d really like to do this or that—because it’s been so long—doesn’t change anything. If it’s not safe, it’s not safe and you can’t do it. That’s the thing about being a Dad: You don’t get to throw up your hands. You don’t get to have an opinion.
You just have to do it. Because this is your job. Because you signed up for it. There’s no room here for magical thinking. There’s no room for your perceived limitations or being at “the end of my rope” as we sometimes say. The rope is as long as it needs to be. We’ll go as long as we need to go. We’ll stick with what’s right as long as we have to.
Our feelings about it don’t count.
P.S. This was originally sent on September 23, 2020. Sign up today for the Daily Dad’s email and get our popular 11 page eBook, “20 Things Great Dads Do Everyday.”