pain · you feel you may never gain a thing · relationships · children
what you just named
You came in pain, not joy: that you feel you may never 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 parts you keep hidden are kept hidden by you. Seneca writes about how a man comes to be known by another: cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them. The line is about discipline, but it cuts the other way too. The man your child sees is the man you order your actions to be while your child is watching. They have been watching. They have seen the man you have been ordering yourself to be in front of them. If the parts you hide are good — kindness, fear, doubt, longing — they will only ever know the man you let them see. Let them see more.
heart
What you let them see is what they know. Let them see more. One specific thing.
connection
You stand in the line of every father who decided to be seen by his children before it was too late — the man who let his child see him cry, the father who told his daughter the thing he was afraid to tell her.
Action
Today, show your child one true thing about you that you would normally keep hidden. A small one. A wish, a doubt, a feeling. One sentence is enough.
Reference
Cherish some man of high character, and keep him ever before your eyes, living as if he were watching you, and ordering all your actions as if he beheld them.
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic Ep. 11
practice
Letting your child see one true hidden thing at a time
principle
What they know of you is what you order yourself to show; the hidden stays hidden because you hide it
value
Disclosed self over composed self