July: On Family

July 26

Your family, your closest friends—those who you should have the most patience for. It’s always easiest to hurt the ones you love. 

Maybe because you know they love you back and you take it for granted that they’re there and in your life in the first place and you just expect them to be there every day for the rest of it. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. You can push them too far, just as they can push you—it happens all the time—to the point of breaking. To the point where someone has just plain old had enough and says it’s time to move on.

But if that love is real, and you know when it is, you have to do everything in your power to practice patience, to uncover the truth of why you’re acting the way you are, or help them figure it out for themselves just the same. Keeping up those levels of empathy isn’t always easy, but these are your people. You need them, and they need you.

Attention must be paid. 

• Reflection title: Be There for Them
• Creative inspiration:  Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman
• Reflection question: Who in my close circle of family and friends do I find myself losing patience with? Am I there for them like they’d be there for me?