Story 16 is a heavy story, word is you can hear my voice crack on the audio book. The details of Story 16 stirs up a mix of emotions for me. I think the emotions come from discovering the difference between sympathy and empathy which is one huge lesson, the other lesson in Story 16 is each of us is figuring out how to deal with our own messy baggage, and we are worthy of grace while we work through it. 

If you have ever looked up to someone who continuously let you down, someone who hurt the people you cared about. Hurt them physically & emotionally. Then you understand the pain & confusion of loving and longing for that person even though they brought so much turmoil into our lives.  You understand the cloud of self betrayal that comes with continuing to love that person or deciding to cut that person from your life. Its a lose lose situation.

Until I accepted that we are all fallible. There is humanness behind every hero. My hero, or at least the hero in Story 16 was both selfless and selfish. He had grand visions for me & my brother and also couldnt see past instant gratification. On one hand I had unrealistic expectations. I needed to know this person would keep me safe, laughing, comfortable all the time. I was only able to do this by choosing to forget the ugliness. 

This put me in a state of inaction, and for me failure to take action is a blackhole of misery. So How do we break free from this? My first step is always action. 

What I mean by action is evaluate the situation, look for how Im contributing to the situation, examine what is true. In this situation the truth was that feelings are complicated. I was a little boy and only looked at the good times and filtered out the bad times. So I decided to look at all the times and this helped me make the decision and take the action. 

Another truth that came from this experience is WE (you and I) are heroes to someone and that comes with responsibility. Not a responsibility to be perfect but a responsibility to always be working on ourselves. A responsibility to recruit a group of individuals that model the behavior we aspire to, individuals who will challenge us to grow into our greatness. And the hardest part: Listen to them