A failed marriage? It’s the fault of my parents. A failed career? It’s my parents’ fault. Loss of a job? My parents did it to me.

Personally, I don’t think it’s anything new. I think parents have been used as scapegoats by their children for a long, long time.

But be that as it may, the idea of blaming one’s failures on parents seems to be so widespread that it’s given rise to an entire industry made up of psychologists, psychiatrists, marriage counselors, attorneys, and so on who make a handsome living serving the needs of these unhappy souls.

But sometimes I wonder when such people will wake up to the idea that whatever their parents were like all those years, it has nothing to do with them now. They’re no longer children, and they no longer need to obey their parents because they no longer depend on them for anything.

Now if you’re one of these people, I’ve got something to say to you.

By doing what you’re doing, you’re building a prison, a jail with only one inmate — you. But unlike other prisons, you can leave yours any time you want. There’s no lock on the door. All you have to do is realize that your parents may not have been the parents you would have preferred, but they were the very best parents they knew how to be.

Tell me, now, what more could you have asked?

Think about it.