In the United States, Father’s Day is coming up on June 15th. People sometimes dismiss holidays such as Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as consumerist celebrations that are foisted on us by clever marketers. But I disagree.
I embrace these days as useful reminders to pause in the tumult of everyday life, to reflect lovingly and thankfully about my mother and father—and the mother- and father-figures in my life—and to tell them how important they are to me.
I’m a child myself, of course, and I’m also a parent. In the past year, my relationships with my two daughters have changed. Now they’re both out of the house, and I’ve entered what many people call the “empty-nest stage” of parenting. For myself, I’ve decided to re-name this transition as the “open-door stage.” An empty nest suggests abandonment and loss; an open door suggests new possibilities and the freedom to come and go—for my daughters, and also for my husband and me.
As we entered this family open-door phase, I wanted to impart to my daughters some of the lessons that time and experience had taught me—usually the hard way. If I could, I wanted to spare them from repeating some mistakes I’d made and challenges I’d faced.
I began to gather these “Secrets of Adulthood” to present to my daughters, and immediately I realized that even more than sharing these lessons with my daughters, I needed to remind myself of them. Too often, I had to re-learn the same lesson, over and over. So often I’ve repeated, “One of the worst uses of time is to do something well that need not be done at all” or “Nothing is more exhausting than the task that’s never started.”
I recently published this collection in my book Secrets of Adulthood (can’t resist adding that it was a New York Times bestseller).
In honor of Father’s Day, here are four of the Secrets of Adulthood that I’ve specifically learned from being a parent—the most profound personal transformation I’ve ever experienced.
For instance, one lesson I learned the hard way? Over time, I realized how useless it was to tell my daughters, “Look on the bright side!” “It’s not so bad!” “You’re not afraid of clowns!” I was trying to cheer them up, but they didn’t feel better—they felt worse. Instead, they were comforted when I said things like, “It sounds like you got really rattled during the exam,” “That comment really hurt your feelings,” or “It’s hard to memorize the multiplication tables.” After a while, I figured out the secret: “We make people happier by acknowledging that they’re not feeling happy.”
One parenting conundrum puzzled me for a long time. I love my daughters with all my heart, I don’t want them to change a bit—so why was I constantly pushing and prodding them to improve? Finally, I understood a second Secret of Adulthood: “Love is unconditional, and love is demanding. Love accepts you just as you are, and love expects the best from you.”
Here’s a third Secret of Adulthood: One frustrating aspect of happiness is that we can’t make people change. As a parent, however, I discovered that when I changed myself—when I got more sleep so I was less irritable, when I gave myself more time so I wasn’t rushing around, when I kept my sense of humor—my daughters became calmer and more cheerful. I was changing myself, and my daughters responded. The Secret of Adulthood is: “We can’t make people change. But when we change, our relationships change—and so others may also change.”
But the fourth and my most important Secret of Adulthood is one that I learned years ago, when my daughters were very young. I remember struggling to articulate a strange paradox that I kept experiencing as a parent: One busy Saturday or a difficult week would stretch out endlessly, but second grade would pass in a flash. I would lie in bed in the morning, overwhelmed by everything that had to happen before I got back into bed for the night—but Labor Day would come, then almost immediately it was Thanksgiving, then Fourth of July, then Labor Day again.
After many attempts, I managed to put into words how we, as parents, exist in two timelines: “The days are long, but the years are short.”
These are among the Secrets of Adulthood that have meant the most to me, as a parent. When I texted my daughters to ask which of my “secrets” had proved most useful to them, Eliza replied, “You’re unique, just like everyone else,” and Eleanor replied, “Don’t expect to be motivated by motivation.” Well, it turns out they were paying attention to my life-lessons! Very gratifying.
Using Mother’s Day and Father’s Day as catalysts for reflection gave me a fresh perspective on the Secrets of Adulthood that I’ve learned from being a parent. I’m glad I found this new way to observe this annual holiday. It’s helpful to have this precise reminder to reflect. After all—and here’s a bonus Secret of Adulthood—“What can be done at any time is often done at no time.”
A version of this piece was originally published on the CNBC site.