~So tell me why, oh why should it be that
We go on hurting each other~
Life is a funny thing, you never know what it’s going to bring and – some would say more importantly – you never know when it’s going to end.
The geek in me wants to believe that some madman in a blue police box will come down and whisk me off to the universe; but the logical side of me knows that just like princes in search of hapless servant girls with delicate slippers and talking animals, such things will always be in the pages of fiction.
The bald truth is this: life is wonderful, and life is hard. Really hard. It is an emotional and mental wring-out whirl-wind and there are times…oh there are so many times…when it feels like you have screwed up absolutely everything.
And who knows, maybe you have.
Because that happens, because human beings make mistakes. We make bad choices and we cause tsunamis by stepping on metaphorical butterflies. We hurt each other, we tread on each other, and then for whatever reason on whatever scale…most of us will come back, bandage the wounded, bury the dead (literally or figuratively) and we learn. Because that’s what happens…
Human beings have a marvelous capacity for pain – both causing and withstanding – but we also have an incredibly marvelous capacity to love. To forgive. To move on. Not to forget, forgetting would make the pain pointless, but moving on…granting those new beginnings…accepting them. That is the most beautiful gift we have.
Now more than ever, I wish people could see that. We’ve drawn so many lines in the sand that I don’t think we can even see the beaches anymore. There are so many variations of us and them that we don’t even know who we’re supposed to be fighting, what choices we’re supposed to be making.
In the last few years of my life, there have been many many times I have made choices that may not have been the wisest. May not have been the smartest. I have learned from those choices, I have moved on from them and built from them. They may not have been the smartest choices, some of them are not choices I’m proud of, but they are my choices. I have done my best to limit the ripple effect of those choices, but none of us can control other people’s reactions. That’s also part of life.
I am not always the smartest person in the world, none of us are, I make too many emotional decisions and I think too much with my heart instead of my head, and I often give people too many second chances. I’m not perfect, no one is.
But I do my best, and that’s what matters I suppose…
Because what else – in this crazy thing called life – can any of us do?
So well said, insightful and 100% correct. Our best is all we can do; owning our decisions, and learning from and owing our mistakes.