Hearts Go Out in Love

This is about a sad story; of loneliness—because of love; a familial love—not romantic, nor laced in any complication beyond family. Yet, family is complicated enough. Not that it wants or needs to be...

The Shallow And Deep Complexities Of Family

Family is that thing we can’t live with and we can’t live without.

Let me explain.

Our families exist for support, yet much of the support we require cannot come from our families. Others, like our friends, or us alone, or a trusted ‘counsellor’, must be the navigators assisting us through the low tides of life. Still, there are times when family are the only ones that can help.

Then again, family are much too close to affect much of a sense of objectivity. Still further, there’s always a place for subjectivity in wrangling with loneliness and personal despair. A hug, or to be held, requires no regimen or structure. A silent, unspeakable presence knows no bounds of need.

Further convoluting an already horribly complex dynamic is when we sense loneliness within a family member, and we reach out, discovering how useless our help is. As a reflection, that’s humbling. It’s the phenomenon known commonly, yet uniquely, within family. Family members know our heart is situated right, yet we rarely know what to do, or the right things to say, to help. They know, ironically, as we get it wrong, we’re only trying to help.

Our hearts go out in love—they must. But our love may have little practical effect, despite mutual wills for the joining of such love: their loneliness and our reaching out, or vice versa.

Disassembling And Reassembling A Fact – Love

The facts of our hearts are irrepressible. When it comes to family we cannot help but love. However misdirected our love seems to be, it’s still love. Though it’s not enough in the moment, it was always enough as we look back. There, that’s comfort.

Our sense of felt uselessness within our moments of trying to help is the mere recognition of love; soft, gooey, subjective love. As we’re disassembled by love in that felt uselessness, love also, simultaneously, somehow, reassembles us—complete and whole we become in our imperfection.

What’s reinforced is the total acceptance required that our practical love has limits. When we arrange our thoughts this way, accepting our flawed best without guilt, we issue our love in a less useless way—or at least we feel less useless.

As we’ve discussed, family is essential in reinforcing our handicapped sense for loving people according to their need. We try and we fail, but our efforts are appreciated. And though our love is fractured our motives are never better placed. This is a thing families should cling to. Where is this love coming from? Not, what is it trying to do? But, where is it coming from?

© 2012 S. J. Wickham.