Truths

It’s amazing how many of the world’s problems you can solve on a 60-minute walk during the cool, mid-morning hours.

My College-Grad has been home less than a week now, but she’s joining me in my morning walks. Before I would tap into my iPod playlist and ponder what I had on my to-do list or compose something to post here. Now, I have someone to talk with, and we have covered a wide range of topics.

A lot of our conversations involve getting her ready to move out and what she’ll need for her new life. We talk IKEA, Crock Pots, Foreman Grills and how insane it would be to move her half-ton armoire.

Today we got all philosophical and talked about truths…

Over the past year, she said she had come to two very important life-changing realizations:

• You cannot reason with a crazy person

• You can never be angry enough at someone to make him/her care

It took me decades longer to come to these truths.

There are people in my life that I had to disconnect from because I couldn’t get them to realize how they were hurting me, or how they were hurting themselves. Rational discussions weren’t possible, reason and order foreign concepts.

At some point, people can become as toxic as a poison and self-preservation demands we cut off all contact. It’s not always an easy decision, especially if the person is a long-time friend or family member, but it’s sometimes necessary.

It didn’t take me near as long to figure out my anger at other people was only hurting me.

It kept me from healing, from forgiving myself for what I believed were my flaws. My anger would not change the past, would not change who I was angry with, and would not let me move on with my life.

I haven’t perfected using these truths consistently in my life, I’m a work in progress. Knowing my daughter has already figured all this out, helps me feels less worried about her. She is much more sophisticated and self assured than I was at 22, hell… more than I was at 32. I think she’ll be fine.