Life is warfare and a journey far from home.
—Marcus Aurelius
Leonard Cohen, who had two kids, said that love is not a victory march, it is a cold and a broken hallelujah.
The point is not to discourage you about being a parent. You already bought your ticket and now you’re on the ride. It’s just a reminder: if you go around expecting this to be an unending series of Hallmark moments, you’re fooling yourself and setting yourself up for disappointment. If you’re comparing how you’re doing with what you see on television, you’re being unfair to yourself.
This thing is hard. Really hard. There are dark moments. There are moments when you’re convinced you have no idea what you’re doing and you think you’re the absolute worst. There are moments when you’ll be told you are in fact the worst. But you have to keep going. You can’t give up. You can’t despair.
They’re counting on you.
You didn’t exactly jump out of bed with joy when your daughter came rushing in at 5:00 a.m. to play. You didn’t give your teenage son much of an opportunity to explain himself about his grades. You were distracted at dinner, checking your phone constantly.
There’s no way around it. You screwed up. You weren’t your best.
No way to change that. But the one thing about parenting is that it gives you second chances. It gives you a lot of leap days. Kids forget. They need you for something else. There are lots of tough conversations. Dinner happens every night.
While you cannot undo what has been done, you can choose to take these second chances as they come. You can will yourself to play, even though you’re exhausted. You can stop yourself before getting upset this time, reminding yourself that you love the boy and that he’s still figuring things out. You can put the phone in a drawer and actually be there for the family meal.
We don’t get to do this forever. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Today is a gift, a fluke (especially on a leap year). That’s why each interaction we have with our kids matters, why we can’t take it for granted. Still, we’re not going to get it right every time. So when we’re lucky enough to get another go? We better take advantage of it. We better try harder. We better show up.