The apology

Many of us have young adults visiting during the holidays. It's always a great pleasure, but something of a challenge. I read an interesting post this morning on the NY Times site.  The article, "The Power of ‘Sorry’," brought back some memories.  Some of them are very recent.

I'm not sure when you cross the line from getting more flexible with age to becoming inflexible. I'm still on the flexible side of the line.  As is the case with most parents, I will do just about anything for my young adults. Sometimes it is really hard to do that without getting into a situation that strains relationships and requires an apology.

We all go through a stage when we know more than our parents.  The unfortunate thing is that often by the time we really know more about some things than our parents, we might have missed learning about the things that they really know and understand.  It's one of the great challenges of modern life which often causes me to wonder if the next generation will be able to even fix a toilet that won't stop running without calling a plumber.

Time and space often add to the challenge of keeping holiday enhanced families on an even keel.  Families are much more widely disbursed these days so sometimes you end up trying to cram too much of importance into a short time.

Reality is that we all live very complex challenging lives which often intersect in unpredictable ways with other very challenging complex lives.   It would be nice if there were fewer bosses like the ones we see so often in Dilbert.  It would be great if we older ones who aren't quite to Medicare didn't have to worry about health care, but that's not going to happen easily or quickly. Just like the pointy haired bosses aren't going away anytime soon.

Sometimes we realize that one of the greatest blessings of the holidays is that the  wonderful times often end before they have a chance to turn into something not so wonderful.

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[Stephen]

http://www.twainquotes.com/quotesatoz.html

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant
I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when
I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much
the old man had learned in seven years."