My rabbi said, “My friends, you have expectations of your children based on your childhood. On what planet does that make sense? Surely not this one. You’re saying, ‘Well, when we were young, when we were bored, we went outside.’ Yeah, that’s because all you had was outside. Do you mean to tell me that, having all the things and distractions that children have today, you’d have turned out exactly the same? You’d have made all the same choices you made back in your day? We walked back and forth to school. Yeah, because you didn’t have Uber. If there was Uber in your day, you could call a horse and carriage. Would you have walked? No. So why are you telling me to walk based on your childhood?”
My friends, we forget the things that got us here. So here I am in your world, telling you that this is who I would be if I grew up in your world. That is an example of lo yasuru mimenu (they shall not be removed from it). You forgot the conditions that made you. And sometimes that humility manifests as understanding.
My friends, the full boomerang happens when you recognize that if I turned out this way and I want my kids to be the same, well, let me ask myself: What was it that got me to be here? Not that I was good and I made the right choices, but what helped me? What helped me to be good and make those right choices? And how can I give that version of what I got to my kids?