A Thought

I've enjoying seven types of ambiguity, and this one little bit has triggered something in me. You always read and experience so many instances where there are gulfs between people, where after a period of time the anger or hurt has calcified into resentment or contempt.

My thought is this: how much damage is done between friends, lovers or family members because one person was doing what they thought was best for the other person; trying to protect that person, to help them, to guide them? Who are we to judge what another person needs most? And yet it's unavoidable. But you don't talk about these things, you never sit and say, I really wish I/we could xyz, but I'm trying to be xyz for you. And so we go round and round, inferring motivations from actions and acting in turn and having our intentions guessed at by others. Does it ever end? Can it ever end? How many things have I done wrong, how many people have I hurt and how many things have I denied myself by being so morally "superior"?

And yet I reject the polar opposite, the willy-nilly gratification of every whim that flies through my mind. Perhaps that is a justification, perhaps I tell myself it's wrong to act a certain way because I lack the confidence or the ability to, so I justify it in my mind by saying that's ok, it's wrong to act that way anyways. Maybe it's all just fear and self-flagellation. I am afraid of so much, and yet I am not afraid to be vulnerable, to be open and to ask people to take me for who I am at that moment, whatever the hell that is. I will give and I will take, I am not perfect; if anything I'm probably much more selfish and needy than I realize. I wish...I don't know what I wish.