Some of my friends are going through a rather hard time in their lives. Life has a habit of throwing curves balls and it never throws them one at a time. It likes to keep hitting you until you feel yourself begin to buckle under the strain of trying to hold things together.
What do you tell a friend who has reached the last, last straw? What do you tell a friend who is juggling so many issues that they can’t sleep at night for all the catching up their mind tries to do? What do you tell a friend who is making a decision that will tear them apart?
You tell them the simple truth.
Life can be fucking hard. For everyone. Yes, most of the time, when things go wrong, it’s because of decisions we’ve made. But nobody is perfect. We all make bad decisions. Sometimes we don’t have any choice – all of the available options are bad. The lucky get a few free passes on the consequences.
The unlucky…don’t.
Don’t obsess about making the one right decision for every issue you face. Focus on issues one at a time. Make the best decision possible with what you know, and move on.
***
Let’s talk about football.
No, seriously.
In the movie ‘Any Given Sunday’, Al Pacino’s plays Tony D’Amato, an NFL coach. His personal life has gone very badly, due in large part to bad decisions. Towards the end of the movie he gives a speech that does a remarkable job of explaining how to get through when things are beyond hard, beyond painful, beyond acceptable.
You get through by fighting for every inch. It’s when you stop fighting, stop caring, that you falter.
Never give up. Never stop trying. Never stop believing it can get better. Because it can. It will. If only for a little while, you can find respite. You can find those moments of joy that make everything else fade to yesterday’s memories, pale and wane in the face of new love, a live concert of your favorite band, the tight pleasure of being bound and taken, or the smile of a friend who is just happy to see you.
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Al Pacino, Any Given Sunday