I read somewhere that we never realise growing up that our parents are also growing up with us. It's such a simple truth but it's funny how such simple truths escape us until perhaps we have crossed a certain age. I now remember my mother was much younger than me when I looked up to her as a child. If even at my age I do not really feel like an "adult" when it comes to a lot of life stuff, how much more lost she must have been then? As children we do not have the wisdom to know that our parents are also figuring things out as much as we are. We do not give them enough rope for trying, failing, improvising, and what not. We do not give them enough rope for not having all the answers. I know that I didn't. Which is why when I sometimes look back to how I was as a child or as a teenager, I wish I had done better. Though, to give myself more grace, I also know I did good all things considered.

Looking back and wishing I was a better person not just in this but in many other contexts is something I tend to do a lot. Mostly when it comes to people I love and/or look up to. Maybe it's just an effect of deep reflection which as it occurs at a distance can afford to be idealistic. It misses the contextual and emotional texture of those moments when those actions or responses might have been a lot more natural than when I simply lift those moments out of context. I am human and if I could always act the way I think I should have, I'd be superhuman ;)

I am sometimes worried if people who mean a lot to me will let those few moments where I wasn't at my best overpower the rest. I have realised that you can't change how people feel by appealing to their heads. That's the kind of appeal that works with me and that's the kind of appeal I know how to make. But I have no clue how to appeal to the heart directly... it feels inauthentic because it feels like anybody could spew words and those might not mean anything. Maybe I am mistaken to think it needs any words at all? Maybe they hear it in my actions…?

----

'Happy is the man who can make others better, not merely when he is in their company, but even when he is in their thoughts! And happy also is he who can so revere a man as to calm and regulate himself by calling him to mind! One who can so revere another, will soon be himself worthy of reverence. ...For we must indeed have someone according to whom we may regulate our characters; you can never straighten that which is crooked unless you use a ruler.' ~ The Epistles of Seneca, Epistle XI