It hits you randomly. You’re in the middle of packing your kids up for a drive to the beach. You’re laying on the couch because your back hurts. You’re telling your daughter to stop messing with the thermostat. 

Holy crap. I have become my parents.

There’s a funny part of it, of course. Like those insurance commercials where the life coach is hired to help people not talk to strangers in the hardware store or loudly talk into their cell phone speaker. We should laugh at this because it is absurd. We are absurd. We have become the thing we used to mock.

But we should also be heartened by it. We really did it. We became adults. We have a house. We pay our bills. Nobody checks in to make sure we go to work each day and yet each day we do! We’re the responsible ones now. We are running a family. And doing a pretty good job, too!

Remember: Your parents were just two people who met and then had kids. They had no idea what they were doing, but they learned. They figured it out. They did a half-decent job, or you wouldn’t be alive and reading this. Now, you’re in the same spot. You’re the same age today as your parents were at moments you remember in your childhood. It’s weird, right? But also cool.

If you keep doing a half-decent job, if you keep working and learning, someday your kids will be thinking the same thing. Which is even cooler to think about.

P.S. This was originally sent on November 27, 2020. Sign up today for the Daily Dad’s email and get our popular 11 page eBook, “20 Things Great Dads Do Everyday.”