Remembering What’s Not Ours to Hold

Fatherhood, AI, and the quiet work of letting go

A note on control

This past year has made me look more honestly at my relationship with control.

I’ve always been a structured person. I like days that behave the way I want them to. I like knowing what’s coming, what’s expected of me, and how things are supposed to unfold. Structure helps me feel grounded. It helps me think clearly.

So when I found out I was going to be a father back in March, my brain did what it always does—it went straight into planning mode.

Not the good kind. The anxious kind.

Fatherhood has a way of exposing things

Like most new parents, I felt fear right away. But it wasn’t some vague, emotional fear. It was very practical. Very operational.

My mind immediately started running through everything I wanted to control—outcomes, schedules, routines, versions of the future “me” that would make me feel prepared. I wanted to validate myself for what was coming before it actually arrived.

Now my son is a month old, and one thing has become very clear:

His needs do not care about my plans.

Anyone who’s been through the first few months of parenthood knows this. There is no real schedule yet. There’s no reliable rhythm. The baby calls the shots, and you adjust. You operate on their timeline, not yours. Couple this with the responsibility of caring for your wife the way that she needs and very well deserves, and you've got yourself a moving target.

That’s been the hardest part for me—not the lack of sleep, but the loss of predictability.

Fatherhood, at least so far, has been a daily practice in letting go of the idea that my effort guarantees any sense of control.

What my anxiety keeps pointing to

What surprised me this year wasn’t that I felt anxious. It was where that anxiety was coming from.

A lot of it wasn’t about my son at all. It was about my need to manage uncertainty. My instinct to plan my way out of discomfort. My tendency to grab for control when things feel unfamiliar.

My therapist has brought me back to the Serenity Prayer more times than I can count:

Accept the things I cannot change.
Have the courage to change the things I can.
Have the wisdom to know the difference.

It sounds simple. Almost obvious.

Living it is a different story.

Fatherhood has forced me to get more precise about where my responsibility actually ends. I can show up. I can be present. I can respond instead of react. I cannot force a schedule into existence or rush a season that needs time.

The work hasn’t been about eliminating fear. It’s been about learning not to aim my energy at the wrong things.

Why this keeps coming up with AI

This same framework keeps showing up for me when I think about artificial intelligence.

The speed of it. The uncertainty. The way it feels like it’s touching everything at once. A lot of the fear around AI feels familiar now—not because it’s wrong, but because it often mirrors the same pattern.

We fixate on outcomes we can’t control.

Will jobs disappear?
Will skills become irrelevant?
Will something essential about us get replaced?

I can’t control how fast AI develops. I can’t control where entire industries end up. I can’t control what changes five years from now.

But I can control how I engage with it.

I can choose curiosity over avoidance. I can decide to learn instead of panic. I can focus on judgment, taste, and responsibility—the parts that don’t outsource easily. I can treat AI as something I’m in relationship with, not something that’s happening to me.

That distinction doesn’t remove uncertainty. But it makes it livable.

Precision instead of surrender

I don’t think the Serenity Prayer is about giving up. It feels more like a daily practice of intention.

What actually belongs to me?
What never did?

Most of my anxiety this year has come from trying to hold things that were never mine to hold in the first place—whether that’s my family’s timeline or the future of technology.

Fatherhood redraws those lines every day. AI does too.

The challenge, at least for me, is remembering to stop gripping what won’t move—and to put my energy back where it actually matters.

I’m still learning where those lines are. I probably always will.

But even remembering to ask the question changes how I move through the day. I encourage you to do the same.