There are people that we enjoy. We enjoy doing things with them, we enjoy having them around, and it’s ok when they go as well. Like migratory birds we know they will be back again or we will join them and so there’s no angst, not worry, no regrets and no drive to do this or that. The people and the behaviors match and match what we need, who we and they are.
There are people that we love and who love us. In that loving our lives become better and we become more than the sum of our parts. There are people who love us but who we cannot love back. Perhaps we should, perhaps it would be beneficial if, but in the end we do not and blood cannot be coaxed from a turnip.
There are people we love who do not love us, even as they profess to do so and yet their actions speak the truth. We can spend a lifetime forcing ourselves to believe the words and ignore the actions, making black out of white, making lies of the truth and suffering the consequences to ourselves and to everyone around us. It may be through fear, it may be through ignorance, it could be through desperate need to belong or to maintain a role or identity or mask. But once the we see the opposite, once we see that up is up and down is down, we can never see things the other way again.
There are people we love, even against our own desires, and yet we do not like very much. We think “if only” or “what if” about them each time they cross our minds and this keeps us forever hoping for change even when we know that change is not something they may ever choose. We can suffer through their behaviors trying to find something in them that matches our love or makes it make sense, and we can try to walk away and ignore the pain that severing ties with someone we love causes, but nothing quite satisfies other than the quiet truth that love is.
People and their behaviors are a part of our life. How we choose to behave concerning them is a major theme in ours. Like a holiday recipe our lives are made from these ingredients. This season will your life be full of the joy of good friends or the suffering of “what if”?