We are sold
this lie that love is all "beers and Skittles", cloud 9 or heaven, when in
reality love is about making the tough choices.
When your
baby is first born, you think choice is about the cutest outfit or gazing adoringly into their eyes. Yet the reality is that you must choose
between breast or bottle feeding them, letting them cry or picking them up all
the time, giving them a dummy so they settle or not so they don’t cry when they
lose it… the list is endless.
When your
child gets into toddler years it’s not about letting them decide between
broccoli and chocolate or between wearing a tutu or a jacket when it’s cold -
you will have to make that choice for them.
When they
first start school it’s not about letting them choose whether to buy ice-cream
or lunch from the canteen – you have to decide that for them.
And when
they are teenagers, you have to choose for them whether to drink alcohol
underage is a bad idea – because they will think it’s a good idea.
And once
they are adults, you will be faced with the toughest choice of all: whether to
let them take their responsibilities (and face the consequences of their
actions) or to continue mothering or fathering them to the point where they never
grow up…
So it is
really about making children functional elements of society, protecting them -
even from themselves, and yet allowing them to flourish without clipping (too
much of) their wings.
It is the
same in adult relationships.
We can
choose the easy way, enabling* the ones we love to stay in their addictions,
their dysfunctions, by giving them what they want even though we can see it
harms them, or we can face the tough choice, of ceasing to be a part of it.
And this
goes into the wider society - what do we permit? Is the role of the politicians
to give us what we want (endless access to boozing, gambling, sex) or what we
need (roads, hospitals, safety)?
Love, real
love, is about helping those we love to get what they need, even at the expense
of what they want. It’s about supporting them in their struggle, not just in
the good times.
To truly love
is to accept to sometimes be unpopular rather than people-pleasing.
And that, in my eyes, is the
toughest choice of all.
*Enabling: making
someone’s life easier thus allowing them to continue with an unhealthy
behaviour, for example offering an addict a roof over their head and food on the table, thus de facto allowing them to spend all their money on drugs or alcohol. See also co-dependency.