What can I tell you, my son, of the ways of the world?

How can I say it without fear for your safety and peace of mind?

Do I speak now or forever hold my silence? Do I just take a leap of faith and tell you what life has to offer? Do I burden you?

Do I even have the power from my simple words to protect you and prepare you for the unexpected?

You have led a sheltered life because of my fears. Was I wrong to protect you from the misery of the world? I am writing you this in case I was.

I believed in the indisputable laws of life on which one bases his entire being; the love of ones parent. A universal law, irrefutable; like gravity, or sunsets, or even death. All these pillars of life are now questionable to me.

My agony came from believing that life, with all its unfairness, could have been a haven for you. A person goes in life believing the one true thing life has to offer, and that is the compassion parents should have for their children. Yet, parents can be cruel. If that simple equation is altered then what is left? How can anyone face hardship in life without leaning on the unconditional love from his parents? Where does he get the strength to believe anymore?

My heart was torn mercilessly, from the very people I called home. It has taken all my strength just to keep on breathing. Is there life after such agony? What can matter any more? Who will give me strength, the same God that took it away from me?

Is there anything today I can truly believe in? Is it true that I must protect you my son or is it a fragment of my imagination. Is it just one of life’s rules that can change unprecedented, depending on where I am in life? My disappointment is in the change of rules that should have been forever there for us humans.

In these questions lay my ultimate fear, son. Fear that you reach this unholy ground, where you search for an explanation that does not exist. The question is no longer who we are, or where did we come from, or even if there is a God or not? The question is where can we find the strength and faith to go on in a world that has no scruples to maintain what is sacred anymore. It springs on us tests in endurance that no humane can possibly pass.

I always prided myself on being one of the last optimists in the world.

And maybe it is that very quality that makes me today hang on—the hope for you to carry my experience of this world and try to implement it in yours—in hope of using it as a cushion to all the falls that, you will have nothing to do with.

I have no formula as how to shield you or those you will love from disappointments and hard aches from the people close to your heart- your girlfriend, your best friend, your relatives, I have no answer as to why this injustice happens in our world or why it never ceases. I only have the burden of proof that life does turn on you without warning or mercy.

Always know that those closest to you have the most power to destroy your faith and hurt you deeply, and always always prepare for the stab of Brutus.

Will you have the strength to carry on or submit to despair? If you mistrusted and got hurt, don’t waste a breath don’t shed a tear, just carry on. Face your disappointments and let it shine brighter on your hope for a better tomorrow. Do not be bitter or mistrust everyone. It is your belief in your self that will make all the difference in the world. Be on your way and have faith in your pain.

You will grow from it and you will learn.

You are not an extension of those who hurt you. You are an entity of your own. Your choices are what will make you different, even if those choices are more often wrong than right. Don’t let that be your measure. It is what you have learned from your choices that count. It is how you pick yourself up and walk taller because of it that will remain.

The pain of the stab can be brutal. Bitterness and resentfulness will be your only path at first. Then revenge and payback comes next. The final stage is the hardest to overcome; it is pity and sorrow for your soul, your beliefs, and your life, which you will categorize as miserable and unworthy. Why me? Is the only question that will rotate in your mind for eternity if you let it; you will never understand why son. It is not for you to comprehend or analyze.

It is what it is—that’s all. Take it, and question only how you will overcome it. Some things in life are there to facilitate your life and others are there to make it more difficult. It is just how life is.

You have no ruling over it or vote. In the existence and realm of things, consider yourself a fraction of life’s experiments. Your salvation lies in your pain, work through it, make it’s acquaintance but don’t live there.

As unfair as it seems to you, pain is your only way out. Respect it and it will give you perspective.

Feed it and it will consume you. Ignore it and it will lay dormant only for a while. With your newfound perspective from pain, you will fear not what lies ahead of you.

Trust your instinct even if it let you down before. Allow mistakes to guide you, for sometimes the mistake is the lesson. Do not blame yourself for those very mistakes that make you who you are. Do not doubt your instincts because they failed you a few times. You must forgive yourself. It is not your fault that some are unworthy of your trust. People are different and they change sometimes to the worse and sometimes to the better, know the difference, know when to forgive them, know when to stay away and know they are just a reaction to their own understanding of the world.
You have no control over anyone but yourself, how you absorb it all and deal with it.

Your destiny is in your hands.

What, my dear son, can I tell you of the ways of the world? Hold tight—it’s a bumpy ride.

Believe in your weakness first before you believe in your strength. Be humble so you can accept the mistakes derived from your misguided faith. Above all, have courage to tolerate, endure and comprehend, when all comprehension, endurance, and tolerance are beyond your reach.

Have the heart son, to forgive life, it is in your forgiveness that life may go on.

God be with you,

Your Mother.

~

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Editor: Renée Picard

Photo: Photo by Tobias Koepe at Flickr