To My Mother & Father
I am sorry!
I am sorry for any and everything I have ever put you through. Any worry, any pain, anything at all. I now understand that you were doing your best and everything you did was because you loved me. I understand how little I understood and how unaware I was in my righteous tween, teen, and even early adulthood years. I now understand how clueless I was and, in many ways, still am. How the lenses and perspective I viewed the world through had no understanding of the pressures and challenges you faced as parents, as adults, as providers for both yourselves and your children. I now understand that you actually understood exactly what I was going through, based on your own experiences, as I stood on my pedestal of immense childhood wisdom thinking “they just don’t understand.”
The only differences between my early world and yours were wrapped in the music of the day, the technology of the day, and the culture of day. We view this “generation gap” of the cultures as immense and uncrossable when in reality it is quite small and only widened by the foggy perspectives of the two generations in question and their inability to lift the fog and see how we are both playing out the exact same passage on a slightly different stage.
I love you. I appreciate everything you have done for me. I appreciate every single action you took, knowingly or not to help me traverse the path from childhood to adulthood. Your every action was out of love, by love and for love because that is the fuel for this thing called life. You were and still are growing and traversing the precarious journey of life as you tried and continue to try to guide me as well. You only had and have the culmination of your experiences to guide you. Dependent on the book of law any one individual may adhere to they may judge some of your actions and condemn them as “wrong” when in the end there is no “wrong” in love. There is only action and every action can receive a positive reaction if one so chooses. I now understand that you loved me unconditionally and because of that I am a better person. Thank You.
To my children (to all children, to everyone)
I am sorry!
I am sorry for any and everything I have or will ever put you through. Any judgement, any pain, anything at all. Please understand that I am doing my best and everything I do is because I love you. Someday, you will understand how little you understood and how unaware you were in your righteous tween, teen, and even early adulthood years. I must understand how I was just the same at this point in the journey of life. The stage and supporting characters were slightly different but the passage was exactly the same. The lenses and perspective you view the world through have no understanding of the pressures and challenges faced by parents, by adults, by providers for both themselves and their children. As you sit there and think “they just don’t understand” – please consider that we have been down this same path on our own journey. Please – BE SKEPTICAL! The path has been worn since we last passed the milestone you are at. The creek we simply walked across may now have eroded to be a raging river that could sweep you away to unknown danger if you were to cross as we did. There are parts of this journey that are unique to you and we must be aware of that fact. But please also – LEARN TO LISTEN! We traveled this path and may just want you to take a different direction than we did because we love you and don’t want you to have to face the cliff up ahead that we encountered on our journey. Conversely, we have to be open to the fact that you may either enjoy the challenge of said cliff or it may not even exist anymore.
We live in a world of seven billion (7,000,000,000) souls and perspectives. Each of these perspectives are built on the accumulation of their (limited when considering the whole) experience and “knowledge.” None of them are either “right” or “wrong.” Unfortunately, (from my perspective which is neither right or wrong) this means you will face 1000’s or more of these 7,000,000,000 judges. Each of them trying to force their bias and perspective on the other 6,999,999,999 souls. Most are not trying to force their perspective out of tyrannical desires but actually out of love, corrupted and conditional love, but love nonetheless. Be skeptical, learn to listen, but never take their words personal. They are only one perspective out of 7,000,000,000. My intent is not to judge you, not to force my bias or perspective on you, not to make you follow my exact path. My intent is to guide you best I can by sharing my experiences which you can do with as you wish. Since I am just as fallible as the next and because I love you and worry about you it will most likely come out sounding like judgement and bias at times. Please know that my love for you is unconditional and I never mean to judge you and I will also never judge myself based on yours or anyone elses limited experience.
I love you. I appreciate everything about you. I know you are doing your best. Your every action will have a reaction which may be positive or negative depending on both yours as well as the perspective of anyone else involved. My hopes and wishes for you are that you find the awareness to always find the positive reaction to every action you are faced with.
Love always,
Your Son – Your Father – Your Friend – Your Fellow Soul
What’s your perspective? Who’s words have you used against yourself? Who might you enjoy apologizing to?