If life is a box of chocolates what do I do when it melts

I look at my own life, talk to others, read letters and emails from other people. Life is a fascinating experience full of people who have so much more in common than not.

I listen. Always I listen to others' words and what I hear makes me smile, or grin, or sometimes it breaks my heart.

It is in the depths of the heart that I hear so many truths, so many sweet and sad tales that tell me we are a like.

Each in our own way trying to make sense of this world, trying to validate ourselves, not to others, that is a relatively easy thing to do. We are desperately trying to validate ourselves for ourselves, to convince ourselves that we are okay and good and productive and doing those things we are supposed to be doing.

I see what the people around me do. I know what I do. What I don't know are what the people around me are feeling and thinking. Human beings are good at building facades. We can make a hovel appear to be a palace, but so often we don't realize what is really there until the palace keels over and crumbles because it does not have the foundation it needs to hold it up.

It has always been this way, but in the beginning there were support systems that held most of us up, or shored us up. They were called tribes, or families and they loved us even if we had two heads, spindly legs and were gap toothed. Now, years after we have discovered ourselves, that is not always true.

We hold hands smiling and singing. Everything is beautiful and no one dares to look past the veneer to see if the center is filled with nougat, or something less palatable, because we don't really know what to do about that sort of thing. We want to believe that the veneers are what count. We don't want to talk about survival of the fittest, but the less fit are dropping all around us and very little is being done about it.

What does that say?