Chapter 22: Reflections Continued
I began to wonder whether retirement had affected my parents more deeply than I had previously
understood.
For most of their adult lives, work had provided structure and, from my perspective, seemed to form a
significant part of their identities.
Once they stopped working, I wondered whether some of that sense of purpose disappeared with it.
Their lives became increasingly centered around entertainment.
Watching television.
Scrolling through their phones.
Shopping.
Going out.
Then returning home and doing much the same thing again.
At the time, this frustrated me immensely.
I kept thinking about everything else they could be doing.
For a while, they continued going out with friends. Over time, however, I watched their world seem to
become smaller.
Conflicts arose between them and sometimes with other people, and increasingly they seemed content to
remain home.
The more I reflected on this, the less angry it made me.
Mostly, I became sad.
I felt as though I was watching two people I loved become trapped in a life that no longer seemed to give
them much fulfillment.
I tried several times to introduce things that I thought might give us something meaningful to work toward
together.
Gardening was one of my more recent attempts.
I imagined us growing food, working outside, and building something together as a family.
They didn’t share my enthusiasm.
For a long time, that frustrated me too.
Why couldn’t they see what I saw?
Why didn’t they want what I thought would make their lives better?
Eventually, I realized there was a problem hidden inside those questions.
I was still trying to decide what their lives should look like.
I had spent so much time frustrated that they wouldn’t listen to me that I hadn’t fully considered whether I
needed to stop trying to change them.
Their lives belonged to them.
Their choices belonged to them.
Just as my life and my choices belonged to me.
We each experience life from our own perspective, shaped by things another person can never completely
understand.
I still struggled with that realization.
There were things my parents did that affected me, my wife, and my children. I could set boundaries around
those things.
But boundaries were different from trying to remake my parents into the people I thought they should be.
I could not change them.
And it was not my responsibility to change them.
That realization began lifting a weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying.
I didn’t have to solve their lives.
I didn’t have to convince them to see the world the way I did.
And I didn’t have to accept responsibility for every choice they made.
What I could control was myself.
I could continue examining my own behavior.
I could continue trying to become the person I wanted to be.
And, most importantly, I could try to live in a way that gave my children an example worth following.