Today's Gift
Nov. 27th, 2011 03:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evileToday's thought from Hazelden is:
Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
--Oscar Wilde
The mature person eventually forgives his parents. Any adult can look back and see childhood wrongs and unfairness. Many of us were disappointed by our parents, even neglected or hurt by them. We certainly didn't get all we wanted or needed. Yet, upon joining the ranks of adults, we become responsible for ourselves. Every situation has limited choices, and we work with what we've got. As adults, we realize this is exactly where our parents were when we were children. They, too, were born into an imperfect world and had to do the best they could.
When we can forgive our parents, we are free to accept them as they are, as we might a friend. We can accept them, enjoy the relationship, and forget about collecting old debts. Making peace with them imparts to us the strengths of previous generations and helps us be more at peace with ourselves.
I pray for the maturity and the wisdom to be more forgiving of my parents.
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Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes they forgive them.
--Oscar Wilde
The mature person eventually forgives his parents. Any adult can look back and see childhood wrongs and unfairness. Many of us were disappointed by our parents, even neglected or hurt by them. We certainly didn't get all we wanted or needed. Yet, upon joining the ranks of adults, we become responsible for ourselves. Every situation has limited choices, and we work with what we've got. As adults, we realize this is exactly where our parents were when we were children. They, too, were born into an imperfect world and had to do the best they could.
When we can forgive our parents, we are free to accept them as they are, as we might a friend. We can accept them, enjoy the relationship, and forget about collecting old debts. Making peace with them imparts to us the strengths of previous generations and helps us be more at peace with ourselves.
I pray for the maturity and the wisdom to be more forgiving of my parents.
You are reading from the book:
Touchstones ©1986, 1991 by Hazelden Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No portion of this publication may be reproduced in any manner without the permission of Hazelden.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-27 01:33 pm (UTC)It also goes the other way: the only people who I see putting their parents on pedestals and being in awe of them are people without kids. These always make me a bit nervous, because they are likely to be disillusioned rudely at some point when they discover, say, that Dad had a kid he abandoned from a prior relationship or that Mom was a secret drinker. Perhaps their parents ARE paragons of virtue. More likely they're just secretive private people who their children don't actually know that well.
My parents were teen-agers who had sex. I knew from the get-go that they were flawed. It was pretty easy to forgive them after I grew up.
(no subject)
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