today

Life is funny. Do the stories we tell ourselves eventually come true?
Or maybe somehow our lives become stories. All I know is that I feel helpless, caught in a film, watching a train wreck that I knew somehow was going to happen.

In my family, the narrative has always been defensive. Protect what you have, work hard to establish yourself, preserve, fight, struggle, because the world is out to beat you, to strip you, to destroy you. It is perilous, back breaking, bone wasting work. My father’s pessimism combines with my mother’s spiritual idealism: it’s not a new narrative. And today I feel angry – almost blame them – because what they always feared, always lived, always breathed, becomes true.

But what of compassion? Did they create this world or are they merely responding to a world, cruel and unjust? I wonder because the world I know has constant pain, and there’s nothing to do but hold it sometimes, let it sit in your stomach until it becomes part of you. I’m only 24 years old, but I wonder how you live 70 years without becoming broken or hard, without fearing the world or escaping.

This is not really a commentary about my family, but rather about me. My struggle to reject this narrative, to stay rooted in reality – to hold the pain, anger, helplessness – without feeling the need to protect myself or escape, to trust that my heart is able to hold all this because my heart is held inside a love that is bigger, deeper, wider, than all the pain of the world. And will this story save me? Will it preserve me, nourish me, sustain me? There’s no way to no for sure. But in the end, I feel less inclined to judge than I used to. Mercy triumphs over judgment. May it be true. That’s all I can pray.


Song of the Day: Jon Vanderslice - Kookaburra.