Marcus Aurelius dedicates the first book in Meditations to listing the influences in his life and what he learned from them. A lot of his praise and thanks go to his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius. But the same is true the other way around—parents learn from their children as well.
Recently, Bonisile Mgidi tweeted what could be called an inversion of that passage in Meditations: the man shared all the things he has learned from being a father. And with great honesty.
More info: Twitter
Image credits: bonisile_mgidi
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Since having a baby, Bonisile has become more conscious of time—he no longer has a lot of it. “The guilty pleasures you enjoyed are interrupted and the deadlines you could meet are now extended. That has been the biggest thing for me,” he told Bored Panda.
Another big hit was realizing how constant a baby is. “I know it sounds stupid because what the hell were you expecting? But it is always there. It is not a bra you can take off at the end of a long day or a belt you can unbuckle. It is there. Demanding your attention and love constantly. This shouldn’t have surprised me but it did. A baby is just always there, you have to live for yourself and for it too. It’s weird having another person this reliant on you.”
Image credits: Bonisile_RMS
Having a baby during the pandemic comes with its fair share of challenges but being a dad during this period can have advantages. For example, Bonisile and his partner are now both working from home, so they get to be super involved in bringing up Mihla. “It is great for bonding and predictability,” he said. “I know that tomorrow and the day after that there is a 90% chance I will be at home with my partner and child just shutting the whole world out.”
“We are young and always trying to take outside advice with a pinch of salt. We are defining our own parenting, challenging our cultures and taking in as much information as we can, and seeing how we can adapt that to our personalities. We don’t do 50-50. When I am 30, she is 70. We support each other and the child is a shared responsibility. We take turns with night duty, one day her and another day me.”
You can and should inhale as much relevant information as possible when you are becoming a parent, however, getting hands-on experience and then reflecting on it is the best way of building your skills and your confidence as a new father, and Bonisile is an excellent example of that.
Here’s the discussion that followed Bonisile’s wholesomely accurate thread
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