Where is the love?

I went to work yesterday as I would on any other Monday. I don't like Mondays. I honestly get the blues on Sunday night. I know that Monday is coming and I know I have to go to work and I don't really want to. But every week, I wake up early on Monday morning and get ready and take my boy to school, then deal with traffic on my way to work. I do it because I have to.

But this Monday, I really, really, really didn't want to. Not for the normal reasons. Not because I didn't want to deal with traffic or go to work. No, I didn't want to go because I wanted to have time to mourn the lives lost in the horrific tragedy which took place in Orlando early Sunday morning. I wanted to have time to process it all. I didn't know any of the individuals who lost their lives. I don't live in Orlando. Nonetheless, the news broke my heart. I fought tears, and I fought anger. I may not have known those who were ruthlessly gunned down, but as a human being, I can't help but grieve for them. 

It felt strange for me to sit in traffic with countless others to go punch in some numbers and letters on a computer, to go talk and joke with co-workers, to go about business as usual, while families waited to hear whether or not their loved ones were lying in a hospital bed or in a heap of bodies on the floor of a nightclub. I felt depressed all day. All I wanted was to be with my husband and son, to hold them and kiss them, and thank God for another day with them. All I wanted was to shed tears for those who lost their lives. All I wanted was to focus on something more important than making a dollar.

Now, I know people say that in these situations, we must not let "them" win. We must continue to live our lives. We must continue to know love and happiness and joy. I don't disagree with that. I don't want to live in fear. I don't want to shrink away from life. I don't want to hole myself up in my house or lock myself and my family away from the world. We can never let fear win. That's part of what kills innocent people. Fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of the misunderstood, fear of that which is different. Fear that leads to paranoia and insanity. Fear that leads to hate. No I will never let fear take hold of my heart.

I will admit that I do worry in these times. I worry that my son is not safe at school, or at the park, or at a movie theater. I worry that my loved ones can be taken away from me in the blink of eye, without warning, for no good reason other than a psychopath with a gun or knife or bomb decides people should die because they don't think/pray/love/live a certain way. I worry. But I won't live in fear. And I won't return their hate with hate. It's a vicious cycle.

No, it wasn't fear that made me want to stay home. It was sadness and grief and anger and love. I wanted to stop and look and think and feel. I wanted to focus on what is most important in this world. What is most important to me. And it isn't making money. It's my family. It's life. It's love. It's this amazing world around me. It's the beautiful people that surround me. It's humanity in all its complicated splendor. 

I also didn't want to go out into public and hear all the political arguments and individual ideologies and personal prejudices. To me, in that moment, none of that mattered. All that mattered is too many people lost their lives. And all I wanted was to honor and respect them. All I wanted was to grieve for them and their loved ones.

I wish there were an easy answer to this problem. But there isn't. To take guns away or not take guns away. To close the borders and refuse entrance to specific groups of people or not. To go to war or not.

Honestly, I don't know that there is any answer besides eradicating hate and fear. And that's essentially impossible. Or is it? Can we ever learn to love and accept each other despite our differences? I hope we can. Because we can deny and take away and refuse and war all we want, but that will never solve the root problem. We can continue to fear and hate and kill and fear and hate and kill in return, but we'll only escalate the issue until we wipe each other out. 

I always hope for the best for humankind. But I struggle to be optimistic these days. I struggle to answer the question, "Where is the love?"

Unsteady

As most of you know, music often moves me to write. In this case, it's the song "Unsteady" by X-Ambassadors. When I first heard the song, I immediately liked it. The song is stripped down so the singer's voice takes center stage. And his voice has a sensual quality to it. It's a little gravely and full of passion, sometimes reaching higher notes. In fact, one of the local disc jockeys called it "baby making music."
But it's not baby making music. The singer's voice is actually full of anguish. And the lyrics tell you this song isn't about making love. It's about heartbreak.

"Hold, hold on, hold on to me cause I'm a little unsteady......Mama, come here/approach, appear/Daddy, I'm alone/cause this house don't feel like home/If you love me, don't let go..."

My own parents divorced when I was young. The mind can play tricks with your memories, so I can't tell you exactly how old I was. Sometimes I think I was 7, sometimes 8 or 9. I don't know. But I was young enough that it hurt and confused me. 

"Mother I know/that you're tired of being alone/Dad I know you're trying/to fight when you feel like flying/But if you love me don't let go..."

I don't want to go into detail about my parent's divorce. Suffice to say it wasn't pretty. I often wished they would have made it work or gotten back together. But as I got older, I realized what a lot of people realize. That sometimes things fall apart. That sometimes love ain't enough. That sometimes people fall out of love. And while I was sad and angry as a child, I don't know that them staying together simply for us kids would have been beneficial to anyone. An unhappy home isn't any better than a broken one.

Now maybe a psychologist would take a long hard look at me and my life and say that my parent's divorce affected me negatively. Well, of course it did. I have some painful memories of that time. And maybe I was a little confused about love and relationships for a long time. But I won't blame my parents or their actions. Ultimately, I'm responsible for who I am and what I do. And we can all heal.

In the past two years, I have had numerous friends and acquaintances go through divorces of their own. The reasons varied as relationships do. There were children involved in some. I know the experience was difficult for everyone involved. When you get married, you think you have found your soul mate, the "one," and you make a promise to love each other no matter what. And when you have children, it's like making another promise. So when a marriage fails, everyone is left feeling angry, hurt, and betrayed. 

But divorce happens. It doesn't help to blame. Anger and resentment doesn't aid in healing. The reality is that sometimes love really isn't enough. Marriage isn't always easy. I don't like to say that it's work, because work has such a negative connotation. What I mean is that both people have to try, to compromise, to listen and understand, to give. And that's not always easy. As I've told you before, we humans are extremely selfish creatures. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in ourselves and our own feelings and internal and external battles, that we forget about those around us. We don't see that they are reaching out to us, for us. Or we push them away, leaving them feeling helpless and alone. Sometimes we neglect to see that our loved ones need us, that they are fighting their own battles. We are so blinded by our selfish desires, that we can't see the other person suffering. Sometimes people just take each other for granted. They just stop trying. All this leads to resentment. And resentment is like cancer. It slowly kills you inside.

Other times people just change or grow apart. Some people don't believe that, I know. They say people don't really change. While I agree that most people will stay the same at the core of their being, I do think they go through many changes throughout life. How can they not? Experience shapes who you are. Many couples are together for years, some having gotten married young. And I think sometimes people get married before really knowing who they are  and what they truly want. They think they have found it, they think they are in love, they think they are on the path they are meant to be on, but if they looked deep within, maybe they would find they aren't really sure. And even if they are in love, that doesn't guarantee marital bliss.  

And yes, unfortunately, people fall out of love. Love can be fleeting. Love can be illusory. Maybe they never truly loved the other person to begin with. It's easy to get caught up in romance and idealistic notions of being in love. Maybe they loved certain things about the other person, but when you're married, you see all sides, even the not so pretty ones. Sometimes people ignore the questions in their hearts, or convince themselves they can learn to live with those questions. Maybe the other person changed in ways they couldn't accept. Maybe they realized they  lost themselves somewhere along the way, that the other person didn't allow them to be who they truly are, much less love them for who they truly are. 

There are so many reasons why people divorce. Whatever the reason, it's heartbreaking for everyone involved, including children. But as I said, we can all heal. And divorce doesn't have to be messy.


Unfortunately, the heart doesn't follow any rules. And love can't be bridled. This is its blessing and its curse. That it can be amazing and exhilarating but also painful. It can leave scars. And it can leave you a little unsteady.