Free Agents and Love

How do you protect the ones you love? Obviously, the quick answer is that you can't. The world is bigger, louder and meaner. So why are we driven by these incredible urges to protect those we consider 'ours?'

I don't know the answer to this question and it's not only causing me to re-evaluate how I view my parents, but how I view myself. Good Lord, being an adult isn't easy, but this seems to extend beyond boundaries of age or gender.

I want to be a child, with a child's ability to find an authority figure who'll take care of me. Yeah... That's not gonna happen anymore. I take care of myself. I allow others to take care of me.

I love my friends. I love my boyfriend. This world ain't so bad a place, but... But. Sometimes it is mean. Sometimes people are mean, and you can't know why.

Is there a message in this post besides my wanting to be a child? I don't know. (Apparently, there are a lot of things I don't know. Joy.) Maybe my message, my thought-for-a-day, is to be kind. To be attentive. To be fierce in the defense of those you love.

I cannot stand between my loved ones and the world. I can defend them, I can fight for them, and I can talk them down from a ledge or a bad decision. How do you balance love and protection? In my mind, they come together. The only problem is, too much of either one and suddenly I'm at risk.

I make choices. I am a free agent. So is my boyfriend. So are my friends. We all make choices, good, bad, ugly or lucky. When I remember that, it makes me feel calmer. When I think about our agency, our ability to change our lives and directions, I don't feel so helpless.

In Political Science we're learning about the danger of generalizing. I like generalities. I like labels. They make my world orderly, and I LOVE orderly worlds. But the world isn't orderly or general. (Stupid dichotomies.) The world is the world, etc. So that makes me...me. A free agent of the world.

Who else wants to be a free agent? It's a bit like going for a tethered hot air balloon ride. You fly...to a point. I'm connected to friends and family by love. What a strange, wonderful, confusing emotion it is! I think you'll know it when you stumble over it. If I was going to write The Greatest Novel of All Time (no Reader, my ego isn't quite that big) I'd write it around the myriad variations of love. I think it's the most fascinating topic of all.

It sure fascinates me.

Dios mio
WolfGrrl