Written in tears

I am feeling very curmudgeonly this morning.  I kept finding myself fixating on annoying things as I walked and I know why.  I dropped those thoughts like breadcrumbs, but as you might guess, they led me back to the same things again and again.

It is human nature to gravitate towards the familiar.  It is why people do the same things over and over again in spite of knowing they don’t work.  Comfort is comfort and there is comfort in a rut.

It is also human nature to try and justify our actions, no matter how useless or even hurtful they might be.  We claim they are done out of a sense of duty, or love, or even necessity when, in truth, they just make us feel better because we’ve done them all before.

I have seen people enable loved ones until they destroy any chance that person ever has of succeeding in life and then carry it on into the next generation, because it is much easier to fall back on familiar responses and that feel good rush that comes with it rather than step up and do the right thing until it has a chance to work.

But I have also seen immense love emanating from those the world considers limited.  It is possible to love so much that you are willing to give up your child knowing it will have a better life without you.  That is so much more noble than someone who stumbles along wanting recognition for the way they suffer to raise a child badly.

The rules for loving aren’t written in stone.  They are written in tears, tears of joy and frustration and real consequences.  It doesn’t take a high IQ to do the right thing.  It only takes a huge amount of love and that stirs my soul, relieving a bit of this curmudgeonly attitude.