Forbearance: Patient Endurance

I know what I said about girls calling boys their "little brother" but, like many stereotypical girl moves I make fun of, I am an exception to this rule (don't worry. I'm guilty of a whole host of other things).

Today, I co-babysat with my "little brother" from high school, Taylor Pride. I don't think he and I have seen each other or talked for about two years, but my senior year of high school? We were besties. His word, not mine.

Junior-Senior prom. Caity and I robbed the cradle and went with Juniors. Taylor asked Caity & Will (Tay's best friend) asked me. It. Was. Epic.

By co-babysat, I mean LibbyRosie slept, and Taylor and I chatted it up. He's doing International Relations up at Wheaton in Chicago.

Meeting new friends at University or even reconnecting with old friends is often frustrating. Either you have to give 22 years of backstory for the current story to make sense, or you have to catch up on however long you've been absent in order for your story to make sense.

But then there are those people that the story doesn't matter as much as the heart. I try to collect (or at least keep) as many of those people as I can. Taylor is one of them.

We spent the better part of our time together "real talk[ing]", as he puts it.

Along with arranged marriages, divorce, cross-cultural differences about both of those topics, and being a spy, one of his main proposed topic questions was, "Why do people of our generation try to avoid pain and hardship?"

My response? "It's painful. And hard."

It was a good question, though. We're a pretty hedonistic society.

When something stops "feeling" good, we take it as a sign that it isn't good anymore, and we go seeking for the nearest available thing that will give us that feel-good feeling again as quickly as possible. A very processed sugar society.

But insta-happiness, like processed sugar, only lasts so long, and the crash hits hard. Because you're not spinning life with anything substantive. When the crises of life come, you think that cotton candy is going to protect you or give you the strength you need for a long-term struggle? No.

My cousin Kristina said that in the army, they repeated to themselves the mantra, "Embrace the suck."
They'd be sweating and feeling like Hell out on the field, but there wasn't any way to make it end sooner, so, they just had to engage with it. Accept that it was going to happen.

They survived it. "The Suck", while sucky, made them strong.

I think it's about time more of us learned to embrace the suck, suck it up, and start taking the time to seek out and build our lives with complex sugars. They may not taste as good on the go-down, but when the fight comes, they will be what give fortitude enough to continue on in a manner which will bring glory to the one who created us.