joy · you feel you may gain a thing · relationships · children
what you just named
You came in joy, not pain: that you feel you may gain a thing, in your relationships — specifically with children — and you reached for the Stoic voice first. That's what you've named. Listen now to what it answers.
- Stoic
Spirit
mind
The feeling that you are about to see them become who they are meant to be is loaded with a picture of who that is. Seneca: there are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality. The line cuts in both directions. The image of who they are about to become is more vivid than the actual person they are becoming, and the gap between picture and person is where disappointment lives. Drop the picture. Pay attention to the person. The becoming is real. The picture is in your head. Honor the becoming by seeing what it actually is, not what you have imagined it would be.
heart
Drop the picture. Pay attention to the person. The becoming is theirs to do, not yours to render.
connection
You stand in the line of every father who saw his grown child clearly and not through the lens of who he expected them to be — every man who let the actual person be more interesting than the imagined one.
Action
Today, look at your child as they actually are. Not through the picture of who you expect them to become. Notice one specific thing about who they actually are right now.
Reference
There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic Ep. 13.4
practice
Looking at your child as they actually are, not as the picture you carry
principle
The picture is in your imagination; the becoming is theirs and not yours to script
value
Actual person over imagined trajectory