pain · you feel you may lose a thing · relationships · children
what you just named
You came in pain, not joy: that you feel you may lose 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 closeness you had when they were small was the closeness available to a small child. The closeness available now is different. Epictetus's rule cuts the grief clean: do not seek for things to happen as you wish; but wish for things to happen as they do happen. The wishing for the old closeness is wishing the child were still small. They are not. The work is to recognize the closeness on offer at this age — quieter, less constant, more selective — and meet it on its terms. The closeness has not slipped; it has changed shape. Your job is to be the kind of father who can meet the new shape.
heart
The closeness changed shape because they grew. Meet the new shape on its terms, not the old one.
connection
You stand in the line of every father who learned that growing children require a growing father — every man who let his presence become quieter, more available, less needed in the foreground, and stayed the same load-bearing thing.
Action
This week, find the new shape of closeness on offer with your child. It may be a text, a ride, a single sentence at the door. Meet it as the gift it is, not as the diminishment of the old.
Reference
Do not seek for things to happen as you wish; but wish for things to happen as they do happen, and you will have a tranquil flow of life.
Epictetus, Enchiridion 8
practice
Meeting the new shape of closeness as it is, not as the old one
principle
Growth changes the closeness; the closeness has not been lost, only re-shaped
value
Father-presence that grows with the child