For Good Reason

Even though there are good reasons for me to feel like pendulum Peggy--swinging wildly from one emotion to the next--I hate it.  I want to be in a place of complete trust and safety, total joy and belief, a place where I know in my heart of hearts all will be well, but I just can't 100% of the time.

There are circumstances far beyond even the slightest hint of my control, people and places and histories that matter more and deserve time and effort towards an evolution and resolve that has not a damn thing to do with me, but I still wish I could know beyond all doubt that those wheels within wheels and fires within fires would all come to rest, flame out, and the scarred earth left behind would be truly ready for planting again--and soon.

And I wonder if my anxieties are solely about others, or if I've got some residual lack of faith in myself, in my worthiness of happiness, of joy.  I know that I am good, whole, full of wonder at the world--I know I am a catch, but my hangups--sometimes--are that I don't always know everyone else knows it, so I get really antsy and irritated.

I hate being that girl.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, in The Scarlet Letter (which I love more very single time I teach it) writes: "[I]t is to the credit of human nature...that it loves more readily than it hates."  Many of my students, today, disagreed and said human nature was hateful first because it was easier, that love takes work and most people are too lazy to do that work.  I don't think that's true for me, or for them collectively as this year's crop is a pretty loving bunch, but I have to admit their words have haunted me all day in that I think--if not outwardly, towards others--perhaps inwardly we are exactly as they say, hateful towards ourselves because it is easier. Think about how hard it would be to wake up every morning and say, "I am beautiful, joyful, worthy of good things" and then navigate a world where no one else thinks so.

I guess my point tonight, and through all this ramble I swear I have one, is that even if there are good reasons for me to be anxious, afraid, swinging, there are better reasons for me to be full of love because, in the end, as Ryan Adams would say, "Love takes care of love, hate just burns you out."  I don't want to burn out; I want to be made of light.