allowing other people to change

I've always said my son is hot-tempered.  He has red hair and since he was a toddler has known how to tantrum with the best of them.  As he's gotten older, of course this looks different than throwing himself on the grocery store floor and screaming, but still.  I've worried for him that he wouldn't find a way to control and focus his anger/aggression or even just loosen up on it.  So, I was amazed and my heart filled this week when I got to see him spar for one of the first times in karate.  He was awesome.  He was focused, unafraid, but controlled.  He kept his sense of humor, even when he got hurt.  With the guidance of their teacher, he and his sparring partner helped one another become better.  One of the reasons it was so cool for me is that I saw how my definition of my child, this "hot head" might not be so accurate anymore.  He is changing and as a mom I can see that the qualities of focus and sense of humor together will help him in his whole life. 

It reminded me, in a way, of a time when my sister was about 19 and I was 23.  She was in college and I lived in DC.  I had always been a pretty 'mature' older sister...rather parental toward her.  One day we were talking on the phone and she got irritated with me (I still remember where I was sitting - at my office desk for "Special Events of Union Station") and she yelled, "I'm not a child anymore!  It's time you stopped treating me like one."  It was a total lightbulb.  She had changed and I wasn't seeing it and I was treating her in old ways that didn't work anymore.

We do this all the time with people.  Our parents, our spouses, our friends.  We define them in certain ways - some unflattering - "she's the friend who never calls back"  "she's the wife who is critical."  Sometimes people change and we're so stuck in the past that we don't see what's right in front of us.

I remember telling someone a few years ago that a man I'd known for a long time was an  'a**hole.'  Then I thought what a damning thing that is to say.  Maybe he's not an a**hole anymore, I thought.  I checked it out.  Guess what?  He wasn't an a**hole.  Maybe he never had been and it was my lens of looking at the world that made him seem such.  Well, live and learn.

I recommend observing.  For a little bit, listen and watch people you are in relationship with as if you were just getting to know them.  Maybe they've changed and you haven't noticed.  Just like we all want to be seen and known for who we are, so do they.