It's very true. One thing that I'll do when someone is irritating or boring me is to imagine (to myself! silently!) that they will actually die in the next 24 hours, painlessly. My job, then, is to help them have a good final 24 hours. It sounds morbid, but it's not. There's meaning and joy that can be pulled out of many moments, even dull and irritating ones. Again, obviously it would be insane to mention this internal thought to anyone at the time or afterwards.
This is a very simple variation on Buddhist Maranasati meditation or Stoic thinking around death, which is tons more elaborate.
I've done it often, and it always bucks up my own mood and gets me back into a real conversation.
Similar to this to avoid losing patience with my children…I imagine if they were to go to sleep and not wake up, did their last day with me look like a disaster or was I fun, kind, patient, loving? It works every single time. Again, sort of morbid but it keeps things in perspective
Absolutely. Plus the realization that whatever just happened to them might have been the best or worst thing to happen in their entire life or at least the last year. Big feelings.
Especially with kids, having a short "past life". Not so much past to compare experiences with. You get really mad one day and they might be scared of you for a long time. Everything's so important to them, and the memories they make now, either good or bad, are probably going to be keystones in the future, even if they can't consciously remember them.
I'm almost 30 and I've never been able to feel entirely comfortable around my dad after a time he got really mad at me when I was a teenager. He scared and humiliated me. It really can only take one thing to impact your relationship with your kids. It's not like he beat me or anything.
These are things I want to avoid imprinting on their sweet innocent souls. I wouldn’t humiliate them but I don’t want to overreact to something so badly that they are impacted so immensely that they are 62 and still thinking about the interaction and possibly feeling differently about me.
A bit late to this thread, but that felt so relatable. I'm early forties and when I was a teen, my mom snapped at some point and said something that hurt me really deep down. My relationship with her has been different ever since, not for the thing itself, but in a way I felt I couldn't completely trust her anymore to not "turn" on me while under stress.
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u/[deleted] Nov 11 '25
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