You three, for one thing

Dear Daughters,

We all change our minds sometimes, because we’ve learned new facts or heard new arguments or come to frame a problem differently. But the most important mind-changers aren’t nuggets you’ll note in a TED talk or even lessons you’ll learn from a book. They’re experiences that change who you are–experiences that change not only what you understand but the you that does the understanding.

Take a topic about which philosophers, poets, and lay people alike have opined for centuries: love. Looking back over the last two decades, I’m aware that my understanding of love has changed significantly. But that change feels less like an intellectual development I’ve driven than a series of existential evolutions I’ve undergone.

Twenty years ago, I didn’t know what it meant to have children, and so could only imagine a sort of love that I now consider core to…