Some people take to parenting like a duck to water. Suffice it to say that I’m not one of them. To the extent that my Reporting Officer bought me a book about fatherhood, hoping to make me feel better about stuff. She doesn’t know this, but that book is still languishing at some corner of my messy staffroom table. I haven’t had the heart to tell her, but I think this is crazy. Why would I want to read a parenting book during my precious pockets of Me time?!

It turns out that I just needed the right fatherhood book. I eagerly borrowed “The Daily Dad” from the library because Ryan Holiday’s forte on Stoic philosophy has preceded him, thus sending squeals of delight down my soul when I chanced upon this. He has a great sensing of his audience. He organises his musings in the form of a meditative calendar. Each meditation is a palatable 1/2 page long, thus making it easy for busy dads to read, reflect and ruminate. The delicious white space at the bottom of each page feels expansive; I could do annotation or write my response or doodle something if I so wished. Not that I will vandalise this book, of course - it’s public property!

I expected Ryan to quote judiciously from Marcus Aurelius since he’s touted to be a guru on Stoicism, but what I didn’t expect was how he interspersed his insights with quotations and anecdotes from famous people and prominent thought leaders from the past. He ends each meditation with a declaration that somehow doesn’t feel preachy.

I think he must have established phenomenal systems because I can’t fathom the amount of energy he took to research, record down, contemplate, and match someone else’s lived experience with his Illuminative thoughts on fatherhood. I guess this is what writing full time means. To invest your wholeness of spirit and immerse in the collective wisdom of yesterday so that you can extract the pertinent insights and give them your unique twist to make them a valuable currency for tomorrow. I have much to learn from him in the realm of writing.

And who knows? Maybe I will be motivated to read the book my RO gave me after having my motivation and intellectual curiosity bolstered from “The Daily Dad”. Haha.