You've either got it or you don't

I'm talking about strength. Inner strength. You can't look at someone and know if they have it. But pretty much as soon as they start talking, you'll know. Or if you read their writing. Browsing through blogs and such every once in awhile, it's easy to see who has inner strength and will never give up. As opposed to who has let the world get the best of them and will never figure out how to shake it off and move forward. So often, the strong ones make reference to the mistakes their parents made, but their matter-of-fact tone highlights the contrast between the strong and the weak. They simply don't let it destroy them. The weak do, blaming everything that happens on their parents, as if there's some middle life road between destiny and self-determination called "it's all my parents' fault."

I saw an ugly scene this weekend. Pilot's mother is going through a divorce, her second. After his parents had him, they realized they never should have been parents; they just didn't know how. Pretty much left him to create himself. Build himself. And he's done a hell of a job. An unbelievable job. I'm in awe of what he's made himself into, out of sheer inner strength and power. Not because of his parents, but independent of them, with inner strength and a fire in his belly.

And so it goes... This weekend, Pilot's mother and stepfather were fighting, after he didn't show to pick up the two 11-year-old kids they adopted (yup, stepfather decided he wanted kids and talked the mom into it, and now three adults who never should have been parents are parents), and she'd tried to drop them off two times. They were yelling, cursing, hanging up on each other, badmouthing each other, causing a horrible scene. Who was hurting and crying and shaking and memorizing every word? The kids. The kids who are going to have to build themselves into decent human beings because they sure as hell aren't getting any help from their parents. Their parents are tearing them down (and these are two little kids who've been through terrible drama already in their young lives). I think they'll be able to do it. I hope they will. It was a blessing that Pilot and I happened to be there and were able to defuse the situation by taking the kids where they needed to go so neither parent had to "lose." Neither parent wanted to let us do it; isn't that mature? So they could both sit there and feel victorious, in addition to angry. It was just one afternoon, though, one altercation and one ride across town. The rest is up to that little boy and that little girl.

"If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment."