Dreams Are for Coloring Books

We often get bogged down with assumptions about what we ought to receive in our relationships with people and with G-d. We suppose that our partners ought, for instance, to prioritize chatting with us when returning home from work, or that our children ought, for instance, to give up their precious leisure hours to help us with household chores. Similarly, we might suppose that the ends we've determined for our careers and for our health, and that the means by which we think that we ought to achieve those ends, are the only ways in which we can move fittingly through life. Such beliefs are unrealistic, and even harmful. Our dear ones' urgencies don't always match ours. Our urgencies don't always dovetail with theirs or with G-d's. That's okay. In learning how to weave together their needs with our own, and in learning how to accept, rather than to fight against, the measures that G-d gives us, we grow personally, parentally, and professionally. We become happier, too.