BLAME

Maturing is Realizing You Did Hold the Flashlight Right: A Journey Beyond Blame

There’s a point in everyone’s life when they realize the source of many childhood frustrations wasn’t actually their own inadequacies. It was something far deeper, more complicated, and outside of their control. One such common scenario comes to mind: holding the flashlight for your father while he fixed something, only to be yelled at for not doing it right. For years, you may carry this memory, wondering why you couldn’t just get it right. But the truth is, you did. It wasn’t about you; it was about something bigger, something more human.

Maturing is understanding that your father’s frustration had nothing to do with where you pointed the light. It had everything to do with his own battle with himself, his struggle with the task at hand, and his inability to solve the problem in that moment. His anger was a reflection of his own limitations, not your ability to help.

This realization brings a profound sense of freedom. You see, as children, we often personalize the reactions of those we love, especially our parents. We internalize their frustrations and mistakes, thinking we must be the cause. As we grow older, as awareness expands, we start to see the broader picture. We realize our role in these situations wasn’t what we thought it was. We were just there, doing our best, and their reactions were about them, not us.

This shift in perspective is a hallmark of maturing. It’s the beginning of detachment from the stories we’ve told ourselves, stories that hold us back from seeing the truth. In this case, the truth is that you did hold the flashlight right. The problem wasn’t the light, it was the frustration of trying to fix something that wasn’t working.

Understanding this allows for deeper compassion, not only for yourself but for those around you. You begin to see how much of human behavior is driven by internal struggles that have nothing to do with the people who are caught in the crossfire. Your father wasn’t angry at you, he was angry at the situation, at his own perceived limitations, at the problem he couldn’t solve.

Maturing is knowing this. It’s stepping beyond blame, beyond the smallness of childhood perceptions, and embracing the larger, more complex reality of human nature. It’s realizing that much of what we’ve taken personally had little to do with us at all.

In that realization, we find peace. We forgive ourselves for holding the flashlight "wrong," and we forgive others for not always seeing us clearly. It’s not about who did what or who was at fault, it’s about understanding that we’re all just trying to make sense of this life, doing the best we can, even when things don’t go as planned.