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 they are coming back to you is doing exactly what Seneca describes: it is we ourselves that extend both these limits, lengthening them by our hopes and by our fears. The return, if it is real, will be on their schedule, in their form. The stretched-out moment you are holding open with hope is what could push them back. Release it. Be ordinary in the next conversation, the next phone call, the next stopping-by. The return needs you to be a place they can come back to without being collected at the door. Be the place. Let the return be the return.
heart
Be the place they can come back to. Don't collect them at the door. The return needs ordinary, not extended.
connection
You stand in the line of every father whose grown child came back when the father was no longer waiting too obviously — every man who learned to be sittable-with again, and let the return be the return.
Action
Today, when you next speak with your kid, be ordinary. Don't make it a moment. Be the place they can come back to without it being noticed.
Reference
It is we ourselves that extend both these limits, lengthening them by our hopes and by our fears.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic Ep. 110
practice
Being ordinary in the next contact so the return can happen as itself
principle
The stretched-out moment of hope is what could push them back; ordinary is what receives them
value
Sittable-with over hopeful-of