Trust

I was wondering: does love (pleasure) require pain from us? Is it an integral part that cannot be separated? Take parents for example, it seems to me like when we stay out late, they can just place trust in us. Instead, as we all know, they rarely sleep well until we are home. Supposedly this worrying and stressing is due to their “love” for us. Now, I’m not disputing whether our folks love us or not, surely they do, but I’m just thinking maybe loving someone doesn’t mean we automatically worry about them or stress out when they don’t come home before midnight. I think we choose to worry, for a number of reasons; we may not trust them but want to convince ourselves (and they, on the surface) that we really do, we may just be self dramatizing (“Oh swoon, poor me, see what I must deal with?” Don’t underestimate this one, it’s a killer,) or we may just not know any better, thinking we MUST be killing ourselves with stress if we love someone, otherwise we’d feel guilty because if we don’t worry, we may seem “heartless and cold” to ourselves and others (this seems pretty prevalent in Chinese culture.)

It seems pretty straightforward and simple to me. Last night, my pops didn’t come home until around 11 pm. My ma was practically pulling out her hair. Now, I love my pa, but what’s the use of worrying? It’s not as if he’s a seven year old kid at the mall, the man’s almost a senior citizen for Christ’s sakes! He’s street smart and wise in his own way, he can take care of himself. I think this constant worrying is due to a feeling of lost of control. We don’t trust others to care for themselves. We just love to micromanage. Well, we can’t control everything. In fact, we can’t control ANYTHING in this world but ourselves, so it’s futile to stress and make ourselves exasperated. If my pops keeled over and dropped dead, all of our worries won’t bring him back alive. If he busted a tire, he’s probably fixing it, we won’t help at all by pacing the floor, will we? Plus, he’s got a cell phone; he can call if he needs anything.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t be considerate and give a courtesy call to the people we live with if we’re coming home late. I’m saying maybe if we learn to trust each other, truly trust, instead of just paying lip service like most people (yes, you) then we wouldn’t HAVE to give status reports. After all, who really likes doing that? God knows I hate being nagged, and I refuse to check in with anyone.

I’m never getting married…