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I had just finished a tremendously depressing conversation with my family. Not that there was anything particular wrong, it was simply a bad day, and so all the problems bubbled up. My great-aunt, whose health is starting to go. My brother, who seems to be angrily miserable in every aspect of his life. My sister, struggling to support her husband and daughter. My father, irritable and temperamental and terribly bad at handling it. My mother--
No surprises, really. Same old, same old. But that in and of itself was what made it so terribly depressing, because these things-- except for my great-aunt's getting-old problem, which is not so much a problem as an inevitability-- have been problems for years. And they're still problems. And they're still going to be problems tomorrow, next week, next year.
Why are we so helpless in the face of these issues? It's not like we don't try to solve them. And yet they persist, year after year-- problems of situation and problems of personality.
It reminds me again one of the reasons why I have chosen to live far, far from these people who I love. Because I can see everything so clearly. Because sometimes I can even see how to solve the problems. And I can't. Nothing I say or do will ultimately fix the situation.
I wonder: is the whole world like this? Does every person who walks the earth move beneath a cloud they can never escape? Are we so broken, why can we not fix ourselves?
No surprises, really. Same old, same old. But that in and of itself was what made it so terribly depressing, because these things-- except for my great-aunt's getting-old problem, which is not so much a problem as an inevitability-- have been problems for years. And they're still problems. And they're still going to be problems tomorrow, next week, next year.
Why are we so helpless in the face of these issues? It's not like we don't try to solve them. And yet they persist, year after year-- problems of situation and problems of personality.
It reminds me again one of the reasons why I have chosen to live far, far from these people who I love. Because I can see everything so clearly. Because sometimes I can even see how to solve the problems. And I can't. Nothing I say or do will ultimately fix the situation.
I wonder: is the whole world like this? Does every person who walks the earth move beneath a cloud they can never escape? Are we so broken, why can we not fix ourselves?
