At dinner with my family, I realized what this blog was really about.
I feel like so much time is spent focusing on what keeps people apart. The little cracks in the fabric of relationships, the shortcomings of love, the decaying of friendship. It feels like very few works of literature or art are about happy people, and if they are about happy people, they're often synthetic-feeling and syrupy. Rarely do movies concern truly happy people. Happiness never just comes to a person. Happy people are strong, industrious, fragmented, injured, and hopeful. They are often just as damaged as their miserable counterparts. If not more.
Despite this obsession with pain, I think there's something so beautiful in the strings that hold people together. Abandonment happens, sure, and selfishness and insecurity are powerful motivators. Yet people will always be extremely caring. Families aren't just a necessary by-product of society. I really believe there's a powerful intrinsic motivator there. People want to connect, want permanency and bonds in a life that's so frightening and unpredictable.
People come alive when they interact, when they meet each other. There's a wonderful feeling of connection, of your heart coming alive in communion with another. Love has more layers than any other emotion. It's contested more than hate, challenged more than fear, betrayed more than affection. But it's so powerful.
I realized as I looked at my family- small, battered, little family that we are. We've survived cancer, death, Alzheimer's, drug addictions, pregnancy scares, first loves and flameouts, years of resentment, frustration, and exhaustion. But we're still here, we still love one another. We're still supportive and happy. And as the dust continues to settle from years of upheaval, I'm realizing that it will stay that way.
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