I recently had a conversation with a relative, someone who I consider like a brother.

What poured out of this conversation was despair, anger, negativity, and bitterness. The past deep seeded in the mind of this loved one. A past that is foreign to him because it’s the past of his parents. Understandably, sometimes that past of parents continues to haunt the children.

He was also upset for problems and differences that his parents and my parents had when they were much younger–when we were children. I never took those issues as part of me, so I was surprised to hear all these things that were left somewhere in the past.

The author of Soul Mates Thomas Moore explains the following, “When we resolve our own questions of absolute meaning by reducing them to family dynamics, ultimately blaming our parents for life’s difficulties, we dehumanize our parents and oversimplify the challenge of our own existence.”

I love this quote because sometimes we blame our parents or others for certain difficulties ignoring that they are human beings, and they had their own demons to fight. But it’s up to each individual to embrace the trials of this life to make us grow; trials should not be a means for our own destruction.

Putting the burden on parents or others for an unhappy life is shying away from life. Life isn’t perfect. No one is perfect. We need to scrutinize deep inside of us for that thing that makes us happy. Once we find that dream, that hope, that goal, we need to clasp it and not let go.

It’s never too late to turn our life around. As long as we are breathing, we have an opportunity to resolve issues and make a change. Anger and hate only harm the individual. It’s self-poison. Slowly killing yourself. We must practice forgiveness. We all have our disagreements and differences. But so what? It’s okay. It’s not a reason to hate. It’s just another human being different from us, that’s all.