joy · you delight in still having a thing · relationships · children
what you just named
You came in joy, not pain: that you delight in still having 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
What you became was reclaimed from what you had been given. Seneca opens his first letter with the work: set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. The freedom Seneca writes about is the freedom from being defined by the time others took from you. What you were given by your own father was a portion of time forced or filched or slipped — time you had to undo before you could be the father your children got. You did the work. The gratitude is exact: not for the suffering that occasioned the work, but for the work itself, which was yours to do and which you did.
heart
Be grateful for the work you did, not for what required it. The work is what made the father they got.
connection
You stand in the line of every father who reclaimed his time from what had taken it and used the reclaimed time to be a different kind of father — every man whose freedom was the freedom to choose his own fatherhood.
Action
Today, do one small thing only your reclaimed self could do for your child. Notice that you are the one doing it. That is the gratitude.
Reference
Set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic Ep. 1.1
practice
Doing one small thing today that only the reclaimed self could do
principle
The father they got was made by the work you did to reclaim yourself; the gratitude is for the work, not the conditions that required it
value
Reclaimed self as the father-source