"When parents know how to assign the task with authority, when the coachman knows from seasoned experience how to assign the task, it is indescribably helpful. So it is also for the adult when the task is firmly set with the authority of eternity, which is indescribably helpful in carrying out the task. If a child is so unfortunate as to have a father who does not know how to command, or the horses a second-rate driver, it seems as if the child and the horses would not have half of the powers they actually do have. Alas, and when the adult who is the sufferer surrenders his soul to the power of vacillation, he is actually weaker than a child. But then it is indeed also a joy that hardship is the road, because then the task is immediately at hand and stands unshakably fixed and firm. Hardship is the road-and this is the joy: that it is not a quality of the road that it is hard, but it is a quality of the hardship that it is the road; therefore the hardship must lead to something; it must be passable and practicable, not suprahuman."
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Original Language: English
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Søren Kierkegaard Upbuilding Discourses in Various Spirits, Hong p. 299-300 (1847)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Parenting
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Parenting
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