Tough Love
Parramatta: A Dictionary of Place and Memory - T
In The Lovers towards the end, there’s a scene called Tough Love. One person has to speak the truth – unvarnished – to a friend.
What are the tough love lessons of life?
It is mainly this one.
No matter my desire, I cannot live another person’s life for them, that I can’t make their decisions for them, that I can’t reach into their heart to lighten the suffering they bear.
Not every year is equal in load across the calendar of life.
2012 was a heavy year, and though I started The House of Youssef in 2015, the origin story is in 2012.
2020 had a particular stress, partly due to the pandemic, but there was another hidden stress. It is a stress that lurks in the background with the additional pressure in 2023 and this year of 2024.
The options are to buckle or else to reconfigure the load that we all – to different degrees – silently bear.
It would be dishonest to pretend that these years were equally dark and there wasn’t joy as well.
They have had a clarifying power, defining starkly what to keep close and what I don’t want in my life.