Kate at sweet/salty has a gorgeous post this morning. Her last lines are a far more evocative and articulate description of something that’s been much on my mind lately.
I’ve been thinking about how most everybody’s ‘bad’ behavior comes from deep human emotions. Of how I want to be more compassionate to those I love when they behave in annoying ways, since I know it is an expression of true feeling. I don’t know why it is so hard to say what we mean, to describe what we want. Maybe because we are afraid that if we ask for what we want nobody will offer it? Maybe because we are afraid to expose ourselves, to be truly vulnerable, because rejection of that realness would sting far more than someone just being mad at our tantrum or whining.
Kate says it much better than I can:
We yearn and mourn and scrape calloused heels in unbecoming ways. We covet. We hardly ever say what we mean. We disrespect a perfectly honourable and universal dark. We pretend despite instinct. We grip white-knuckled to precious truth with one hand, whipping ourselves with the other as though we should somehow be more enlightened than the animals we are.
I need you. I don’t need you.
We are unaware that even at our most absurd, there is no need to apologize. We wander, dreaming like meat of the sweet, hot breath of a siren.