many people spend a lot of time and money…

many people spend a lot of time and money trying to understand the psychological effects that their families have had on them without asking the most basic question I asked to why it happened. This generates a culture of family blame rather than a culture of family empathy.

— from Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)

In the book

The single most useful thing I know for dissolving that friction is also the hardest: the willingness to say I was wrong — admitting it, again and again, has helped me more than almost anything, and most people simply cannot do it, because to justify a grievance they must defend a position. So choose, deliberately, a culture of family empathy over a culture of family blame — instead of cataloguing what someone did to you, ask, with compassion, why it happened. 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. […] Guard the time. Set aside immovable weekly family time, eat together with full attention, and keep a ritual that carries the love. Make family nonnegotiable — and when friction comes, be the first to say I was wrong, and choose empathy over blame. Teach the hard, practical lessons too — that money is a gift to be appreciated and never taken for granted, neither hoarded in fear nor spent into ruin. — Family & Parenting (Family/Parenting)

Don't let differences drive you apart; ask for forgiveness, give it freely, and refuse to hold a grudge. Build a culture of family empathy rather than family blame — most people spend years and fortunes studying the psychological damage their family did them without ever asking the more useful question of why it happened. Give, and create, and lighten up. Of the rules I've gathered, a few belong especially here: spend your time with the people you love, because most people in life are only visitors and family is for life; be grateful, and say so, out loud, often; give without keeping score, solely for the joy of giving; create something — not to leave a monument you won't be around to see, but simply to be of use; enjoy the small things, which everyone claims to know and almost no one actually does; and for heaven's sake don't take yourself so seriously. — Legacy / The Logbook (Legacy/Epilogue)

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