I was listening to Internet superstar Merlin Mann's podcast Back to Work on the treadmill this morning and he said something that really, really resonated with me. He was talking about dealing with the unreasonable demands that people (and the world around us) place on us every day, and he said this:
I think in some ways becoming an adult is (or really in particular a parent) learning to become an adult means becoming the kind of hypocrite you can live with.
While this isn't exclusive to parents, it wasn't until I had kids that I really had to deal with the conflicts and compromises that I had been quietly been ignoring in my life. Basically, it wasn't until then that I started to realize it was OK to become the kind of hypocrite I could live with.
The Hypocrite You Can Live With, Episode #33 of Back to Work on the 5 by 5 Network (quote is 35:15 in).