There is much that we dismiss because it is disagreeable, and many people who we dismiss for the same reason. But simply because something is disagreeable does not necessarily mean that it isn’t true. Life and reality are often disagreeable, truth is often disagreeable. As a parent, it is a heavy and difficult burden that you must often be the bearer of unwelcome tidings to your children, who would much prefer that the whole world was arranged purely for their pleasure and advantage and greatly resent any impositions from reality or from other persons and their conflicting and competing requirements, demands, desires, and ideas. But as parent, it is your job to help them by preparing them for the world as it is, not as they wish it be, however disagreeable that task might be. We soften the blow with our love and support, with our own shared sympathy of our own struggles and shortcomings and the ways we have had to grow and adapt and become stronger and more than we were. It is in relationship and in challenge that we find our identity, through negotiation and growth and revision and considered understanding. If we were ever to be safe from all the slings and arrows and injustices of life, all the demands and limitations placed on us by others and by the world, we would find that there would be very little to us. We are, in a way, made for challenge, even made for suffering. We discover ourselves and our limits in the overcoming. We discover ourselves in the delicate dance of give and take we enter into in our relationships with friends, family, coworkers, and society as a whole.
Life is unfair. Life is disagreeable. Life is challenging and demands much of us. Suffering is part of its nature. And we all have our part of it to bear. But just because something is disagreeable does not mean it isn’t good for us. It doesn’t mean it won’t make us grow or make us better, that it won’t refine us, won’t strengthen us, won’t force us to develop into someone who can bear the weight. So we must be very wary of our childlike loathing for and fear of disagreeable truths and even disagreeable people. Certainly, they can harm us, they can be pathological, if they leave us no hope, no room for growth, no path to walk. That is the difference between good and bad honest parenting. Love doesn’t hide the truth or remove the challenges and make a captive, pampered pet of a child. Love doesn’t deprive them of the chance to be more than they are and to grow beyond the challenges that confront them in the world and within themselves. Love also does not criticize with no purpose, with no hope or purpose or end in mind. It does not consign a child to the determinism of their nature and circumstances. True love sees you for who you are and the world for what it is and makes you strong enough to face it. True love believes in you and embraces you without restraint and faces you and faces the world without restraint. It accepts you without measure and confronts you without limit. It embraces your past and that which you cannot control and did not choose and arms you with everything you can. True love is a dance between extremes.
Figuring out where the line is is the hardest part of all. Being both judge and comforter is a hard task. Hard enough that most humans have had to distribute the burden. But we each do our part to be both in ourselves, whatever our primary aptitude is. So do not let the judge in your despise the comforter, or the comforter despise the judge. Both are needed for life and growth. A walled garden produces the most delicate blooms, enslaved to their own protection and endless care. An unwatered field produces the roughest and most prickly of weeds, tough and grasping for every foothold. We do not seek to produce either the rarified flowers of the summerhouse or the harsh thistles of the heath. We are gardeners tending a seed of great potential, strong enough to be planted anywhere and weather every condition, lovely and productive enough to enoble every landscape. We give the world the gift of that which grows within what the world is while creating what it could be. We are the one that demands that the price be paid and the one that helps to pay it.
If we try to steal away half the story, if we shut the door on either half of life, we will wonder endlessly why our garden does not grow as it should.
Making Nobody Happy 