Today  I hammered out five scalding pages to protect someone about whom I care and whose security and safety matter to me.  I hadn’t realized that having this person under attack would rile me quite as much as it did.  

After I refined my missive, I sat contemplating the instincts which cause us to encircle our family and friends with an ironclad  protective shield.  Complaint doesn’t even enter into it.  My claws raise.  I vigorously tackle the situation.  My relentlessness accelerates.  My focus sharpens.

I don’t protect myself half as well.  I sacrifice to save someone else but rarely for my own benefit.  My nature compels me to offer harbor regardless of personal considerations.  I can devise a hundred ways to save someone else, and yet I let myself flounder. 

I don’t even get angry at the person who fails or betrays me.  I immediately begin to list the reasons which justify their actions.  I failed them; I’m not worth their effort; their needs matter more than mine.  It’s my fault.  It’s understandable.  They did their best.

I’m not sure what all this means.  These thoughts fall like Lego pieces scattered across the table.  I’m trying to make sense of the jumble.  I turn them around, press them together, stack them in piles.  A pattern emerges but i don’t yet know what form it takes.  I jockey them around until they fall in place, straining to discern the emerging contours.  

What it is. . . I do not yet know.

It’s the fourteenth day of the sixty-fifth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.