My middle child was drawing with one of her younger cousins, and the cousin was getting frustrated about making mistakes. My daughter said to her: “That’s okay. Mistakes are proof that you’re trying.”

What wisdom this child possesses!

Good reasoning and patience have a tendency to snowball. Teach those things early, and very, very quickly your children will become smarter than you could have dreamed. They’re already all much smarter than I am, a fact that brings me tremendous joy.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes while raising them, of course. But that just proves I’m trying.

‘Tis the season. You’re spending a lot of time with people – that’s good! Mostly.

Time with your loved ones is amazing; the beating heart of a good life. But don’t feel like you have to overdo it. The important thing is the time, not the window dressing. Make it less stressful for yourself. It doesn’t all have to be activities and dressing up. Even a phone call is nice.

Don’t try to do so much that you do nothing. Be alone when you need to (and we all do), but let the time you spend with others be a joy, not a chore.

Long quests are best done with an ally or three at your side. The longer the mission, the more likely it is that you’ll need their help. Not necessarily for the logistics, but because no one can walk forever without having doubts. Trials of the soul. A heart beating next to yours is the best remedy.

The boldness and cheer of my children. The life I am able to live. The joy of service when I can find it. The inescapable wonder of the world.

I am lucky beyond belief.

When a miracle happens, we often try to recreate it. We try to find a way to capture that magic, to turn it into a renewable resource. We create endless film spinoffs of successful single movies. We try to re-tell a joke, seeking the same laughs. We live in our glory days, never realizing we’re robbing of them of their glory.

But you can recreate magic – just not exactly the same magic. You have all the ingredients, because they were all you, all us. Embracing life, being creative and present, allowing the space for miracles; these are the ingredients for bottled lightning. It won’t be the same film, the same joke, the same glory. But it will be just as amazing, if not more, if you simply embrace the idea that it can be.

One of the greatest gifts you can give your children is also a massive investment in your own future. Give your kids the gift of solid bonds with other children.

If you’re lucky enough for them to have cousins, do everything you can to engineer time together, including changing your own life to be closer to them. If they don’t have cousins, make sure you’re making it a priority to support their friendships. Dedicate time, give rides, invite the kids over to dinner. Do it all. Few things are more important.

The bonds your children make will in turn make your children stronger. They’ll be smarter, more resilient, more social, and better able to handle life. That not only means you’ll be directly supporting them for a shorter period of time as they launch their own adulthoods more successfully, but it means your own bond with them is likely to stay strong as you yourself age. That’s a good thing to look forward to.

Lots of people spend more time in fiction than in real life. Especially if your real life is relatively similar day to day, but you’re a voracious consumer of books, movies, etc. And this can give you a skewed sense that real life should – or even does – mirror the tropes used in narrative storytelling.

It doesn’t.

There aren’t convenient character archetypes. Things aren’t evenly spread. They don’t always wrap up neatly. There isn’t always an answer.

Real life is joyous. So is fiction. But one isn’t the other.

The most cared-for and valued things aren’t the shiniest. They’re the ones with the most patches.

If you see a road with many different patches of asphalt, that means the road is well taken care of. Asphalt decays over time; that’s not a fault of the material, it’s just a truth of most things. To keep the road operational, you need to constantly be filling in those gaps and holes. The result won’t always look pretty, but it will be strong. If you don’t, the cracks will widen, and it will eventually stop being a road.

A brand-new road looks good, but it hasn’t been tested yet. You don’t know if people will put in the effort to maintain it yet. So don’t be fooled.

If you love something, that means you value it enough to repair its damage, again and again. Things get damaged, and that doesn’t mean they aren’t good. Patch those spots, and show your love.

No matter how good or bad something is, people can still think it’s worse or better than it is. Knowing that, find the people who are wrong in the right ways, and be friends with them. No one is objectively correct about anything – but being wrong together is fun.