I didn’t expect a video game to change how I think about leadership or parenting, but Red Dead Redemption 2 did exactly that.

At first, it’s just a fictional western game. You play as Arthur Morgan, a senior member of an outlaw gang trying to outrun a world that’s catching up. It begins as a story of survival and slowly becomes long and sad.

Arthur realizes the stakes with a cough. Tuberculosis. No cure. No reset button. Just time.

From that point on, the question shifts:
It’s no longer “How do I survive?”
It’s, “What kind of person do I want to be with the time I have left?”

That made me ponder a lot longer than expected.

Playing Arthur, a man once defined by violence, move toward something quieter and more protective. He doesn’t try to fix the system. He simply shows up differently: with more clarity, with less harm.

He chooses to help John Marston, the younger man who still has a future (the protagonist of the first game), find a way out.

That changed how I thought about leadership and parenting.

Maybe it’s not about vision or control, or “saving” anyone.
Maybe it’s just holding the space long enough for someone else to see a way forward. Even if no one notices. Even if nothing changes.

There’s a moment near the end (spoiler alert!), if you’ve played with enough compassion, where Arthur dies quietly, watching the sunrise.
No monument. No final speech.

Just a man who finally saw things clearly and chose to stay kind.

I still think about that scene five years later.

This story reminds me:
You can still choose.
Maybe you can’t fix everything.
But you can decide how you move through it.

That’s how I think about parenting too.
Not as something I’ll ever “get right,” but as a series of micro-decisions my kids are watching.
Do I help them and others find their way? Do I leave them and the people around me a little steadier?

If they see that, maybe they’ll carry it forward.

Because sometimes the most important thing you do is making sure someone else walks out of it intact.