Another installment of my real estate taxes gets paid today --- and I am 6 thousand or so dollars poorer! Death, the second inevitability, also moves closer as physical deterioration settles into aging joints and even quicker-aging body systems. And Love's failures, as some poet might say, are always with us and creep past our peripheral vision to cover us over -- all without ever being clearly seen.
I can handle the taxes -- at least so far. Death is coming on like shadowy night -- but I am pretty sure I can handle that too. Love's failures -- which are mostly past -- and preordained for the future; are the most difficult challenge to reckon with. Why? Our intentions are nearly always "good" when we love -- but they are most often unmindful enough of what is good for the other -- and so they fail, not so much from willful selfishness, as from unappreciated ignorance of the other. I never paid enough attention -- I was too fearful to notice the details -- I was too absorbed in success and failure to improve the very process that would have saved it all. Love requires humility and gift-giving most of all. Not thinking too much; not hoping too much for a perfect moment.
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