It’s not that you were broken before, like the Grinch with a heart too small. You weren’t hopelessly cynical. You liked children. You cared about people besides yourself.

But then you had your own kids, and something changed. “There is so much more inside me now,” Lin-Manuel Miranda sings in Hamilton’s “Dear Theodosia.” Hamilton had always been a striver, since his own harsh childhood had forced him to turn certain parts of himself off. But Philip, his son, unlocked something in him—as your own children have.

The key, as we’ve said, is not just to accept that feeling but to let it change you completely. Let the openness and the love and the faith that you have in your children color how you see the world as a whole. Let the patience you have for your kid who you know just needs a nap, let that change how you interact with your overworked colleague. Let it change how you view that person at the airport. Let it change your politics. Let it change how you see everything.

Being a parent has given you this new perspective to see others with more empathy, more patience, more compassion. Embrace it.