Human Nature

I'm nearing my thirtieth year of life, yet there are some things that I don't understand.

A seventeen year girl meets a nineteen year old boy and they fall in love. Their love survives a civil war, death squads, imprisonment, poverty and racism. Yet when this nineteen year old boy grows into a fifty year old man, he turns his back on the woman that has loved him and stood by him, deciding that he wants to play the field. I don't understand that.

A thirteen year old girl meets a boy of the same age at summer camp. They become high school sweethearts. They pick out the name of their first child when they are 15 and marry at age 18. The first child is born when they are 22 and is given that special name. They divorce that same year. Thirteen years later, this man gives that cherished name to a child that he has with someone else. I don't understand that.

A woman carries and protects a child in her womb for nine months. She hears the most amazing sound there is in this world-the sound of a second heartbeat inside of her. She feels the strength of her baby as she turns and kicks within. She goes through hours of pain but cries tears of joy upon seeing her child. Before the child is a year old, the mother gives the child to friends to raise and forgets about her. I don't understand that.

A father has a precious, beautiful daughter that adores him. Yet when he and the mother separate, he pretends that the daughter does not exist. He can afford to start and run his own business, he can finance a wedding and a honeymoon. Yet when it comes to his daughter he can't pay for tickets to see her or get her any gifts for Christmas. I don't understand that.

A woman has two daughters. She constantly brings strange men around them. Some of these strange men repeatedly molest the two little girls. The two little girls grow into women that cannot trust men and do not trust their mother. The mother takes no responsibility for the pain she has caused her daughters and makes no attempt to help them heal. I don't understand that.

The scenarios above are a mix of situations that I've seen and/or experienced. I think about them often. I do this because I want to make sense of things. My world is much better when everything is black and white. But for the life of me I can't figure these things out. At times I think I should be glad that I don't understand these things. If I understood them then I may be able to justify them and possibly carry them out. My inability to understand these actions makes me feel like my moral compass is still in place. However it doesn't change the reality. So I sit at my PC and blog. I think of the daughters and the sons and the husbands and the wives. I cry for them, I cry for myself and I cry for all of the pain that we humans choose to inflict on each other unnecessarily.