How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

Like most of us I was a very strong willed teenager. I had opinions on everything and knew exactly how I would handle myself in any situation that were to present itself.

Time provides  the opportunity for experiences that can lead to perspective:  the true understanding of the relative importance of things; a sense of proportion.

Having children was the thing that  shifted my perspective the most.  People who don’t have kids just don’t know, and I really didn’t get it until I met my child. Like from the minute they are born it is their purpose in life to not conform to your wishes, they are their won people and will demand to be treated as such. It is like I have run a gauntlet every morning by the time I am done with drop off and sitting down at my desk. I could choose to be more heavy handed, but I don’t want to live like that either. I’m not a clean your plate and no screen time parent.

You learn you can’t fight all the battles, physically or mentally. Choosing your battles is about self preservation, and the older I get the more I choose to not even fight them at all. I don’t need to win every battle.

Traveling has given me perspective as well, having been fortunate enough to travel the world I have met people from all over and turns out we are all the same. There are differences if you look for them, but the similarities out number the differences. It is easy to think of people you don’t see, who don’t affect your day to day, as other or, maybe even less than for some reason. Meeting people where they live is eye opening.

If you live long enough you learn that bad things happen to all of us, that is life and the more you endure the more empathetic I think that makes a person, at least that has been the case for myself.

I believe that living life, can lead to a person becoming more willing to give grace.

The passage of time has made me realize, you don’t know how you will react to something until you are living it and everyone has their own reasons, that will change as they move though their life. It isn’t on me or anyone else to judge. A lot of life is lived in the gray, but as I was thinking,  I do have hard lines where there is no gray. Treating people poorly, cruelty is never accepted. Treating any person as less than, that is black and white. I don’t care what life experiences you have, if you are cruel for the sake of cruel, you are wrong.  I have also decided that ignorance is not an excuse. The first time someone challenges you and you don’t decide to look into the matter more…  the truth is out there and easy to find. There is a 12-year-old boy out there  preaching this right now. Google and the library are free. If you are online, you can do your own research.

Major events are always a learning experience. They don’t happen often, otherwise they wouldn’t by definition be major I suppose. I love to learn new things. My mother-in-law passed in January and she was at our home for hospice at the end. It was an extremely sad situation but the amount of knowledge I gained was invaluable. It really did open my eyes to a whole world of people who exist in the human death sector. And surprisingly it wasn’t hard in the ways I expected. If you are an empathetic person the care comes naturally. We didn’t know what we were doing but we knew why and that was all we needed. I wouldn’t do it differently if we could do it over.