It hurts me to be cynical, but I cannot dissuade myself from believing it: from the moment we are born, it’s all damage control. Caused by any struggle and hustle. Staying alive, the fear of eventually dying, having a handicap, living at the wrong place at the wrong time, and so much worse. Wars, violence, your trauma, other people’s trauma, epigenetic trauma, having an absent father, a depressed mother, living a “regular” life, being the first sibling, the second one, the third one and so on. Pick your source of damage.

Becoming a parent closed the case for me; I see burdens with my name on them, already on my kids. We are all blessed and condemned with pulling and pushing a stone, bigger or smaller probably makes no difference.

I wish I could choke my cynicism to death. I do. I do not envy the happy-go-lucky, but I wonder how they pull it off. Am I so blind? Is my rock so big that hinders me from seeing what they see? Am I so damaged? I doubt it.

Perhaps my rock is my way of creating a meaning of this nonsense; for now at least. Damage control might make my kids’ stones rounder, and lighter. Reparation may be a mirage, yet is a legitimate objective.

Mirages are legitimate objectives.