Circle of Life

I just had this great conversation with a friend of mine. We were talking about parenting. Before I had kids, it was easy for me to sit in judgement at a kid having a tantrum (or worse, a parent yelling at or spanking their kid). I even remember harboring a lot of resentment about the way my parents did things (I didn't get enough attention, they yelled too much, blah blah blah). This isn't new information, I know I've written about this before, and how now that I'm a parent I understand how hard it is to be patient, not spank, etc.

My new revelation on the topic is that this judgement and subsequent "oh, now I get it" is part of the amazing circle of life. If we live long enough to come around to the point in the circle of life where we can finally understand in one circumstance (parenting), then we can apply that same knowledge to any number of difficult situations where we feel anger towards a person for something they did to us. And to me, that's the point of life and why we were put on this earth, to understand and forgive each other, even when a person doesn't know they need forgiving.