With the new information that I have now, there…
With the new information that I have now, there are many things that I regret. I regret the way I dealt with my parents. I did not give them the proper respect or love. I regret the way I dealt with my children. A better question would be how would I do it differently? Living life is an extremely complicated process of moving an infinite number of levers up and down to calibrate them to reach a level of perfection for yourself and for the world and people around you. Many times those lovers are pushed and pulled by other people. IMPORTANT
— from Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting) · GB writing
In the book
Family, after all, is the great teacher of the heart; it holds up mirror after mirror until we slowly learn to trade dependence for genuine interdependence. [Here is the place for my own confession — write in, or let me tell you across the table, the specific things in how I dealt with my own parents and my own children that I would do differently now.] I will say only this much in writing, because you deserve to know your grandfather does not stand above this weather: with everything I understand now, there are things I regret — the way I dealt with my parents, and the way I dealt with my children. And then I ask the better question, the only useful one: how would I do it differently? Living a life is the endless work of moving an infinite number of levers up and down, trying to calibrate them toward something good for yourself and everyone around you — and many of those levers are being pushed and pulled by other hands at the same time. […] The first is a confession. With everything I understand now, there are ways I dealt with my own parents, and with your parents when they were small, that I would do differently if I could. I am telling you this for your sake, because I want you to know, on the authority of someone who has lived it, that no parent who loves you ever means to hurt you, even when they get it wrong. — Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)