On Parents, and How They, Shockingly, are Kinda Useful, After All

(Not a depiction of my parents.)When we're kids, we don't think about life much. We don't have to plan. We wake up. Eat breakfast. Go play. Go to school. Finish school. Play some more. Eat some more somewhere in there. Do some homework. Study. Play more. Go to sleep. Then we start the cycle all over again. 

When we're kids, we don't think about stuff like how what we do impacts the quality of our life. Our parents do that for us. That's why, when we're younger, it seems like they're always freaking out on us about one thing or another. 

Eventually, we get out of the house. For most of us, it's for college. And college, as we all know and love, is quite the time. We don't have Mom or Dad freaking out on us anymore. Things get a little crazy. And we discover what it is to be free. Like when we were kids, we wake up, eat breakfast, "go to class to pass the time," then go play some more. And, repeat. 

A few years go by, and we (hopefully) graduate, and we get jobs, and suddenly we have less time for the craziness. We can't get away with screwing around anymore. As we push and strive to catch up with life, it happens gradually but feels sudden: we grow up. One day, we realize that we, and we alone, are responsible for our lives and the direction they take. And when we do, we look at our parents and all of that insanity, and it dawns on us like a vision from on high, and we think, "Oooohhhhhh ...."

Turns out they actually did know some stuff. Do they get some of it wrong? Does a babboon have a fat red butt? 

Yeah. But I can't hold my parent's mistakes, fat and red and butt-like as they might have been, against them. It just means that, lo and behold, they're human. Just as imperfect as all the rest of us. But they had things figured more than I did. I also see where they got it right, and where their hearts were. I can look back and, as vividly as I recall their mistakes, I also recall mine. I sometimes attacked them instead of just listening. And my heart breaks a little each time, because I see now how much I meant to them.

I'm just grateful I'm starting to understand now. Parents are there to teach, both in their moments of brilliance and in their moments of ... well, less than brilliance. 

To me, living a quality life means living a full life, one that's warm and healthy and inspires others to feel the same way. For now, for me, a quality life is one in which I am growing, and I have good friends, and my wife is happy, and we are working towards certain goals, together. 

To live this quality life, I must draw from principles by which my parents once forced me to abide. I don't agree with everything they believe about life. But I respect is how they let me be who I am now while still having the guts to call me on my bulls---. Like using words like bulls---. And I respect the things they taught me along the way. 

I'll share more of all that later. But for now, I'll leave by saying that, yeah, my parents drove me nuts for a very long time. My friends' parents, too. None of them knew anything.

But now that we've quit bucking them, and we're coming to embrace life as emerging grown-ups who actually need a little help figuring out this crazy world, it turns out that parents are pretty helpful. And, wouldn't you know it, we actually did learn some things from them—things that will direct us towards quality lives for much, much longer.