the black lullaby

A quote from a conversation I had with a former lover not too long ago. This was the answer I got when I asked the question “Why can’t we go back to being friends?”

It is true though… People do change. Sometimes they change so much that you would look on one individual as two different people. We would all like to believe that the people we love and the people who love us will always be the way they are wouldn’t we? Not gonna happen.

Let me tell you a story, a true story that amazes me even to this day.

I once knew a woman who sacrificed everything for her family because she wanted to see them happy. She gave and gave and gave with all that she had in her. She fought hard to make a name for herself and dedicated her life to being someone of significance. She was put through so much of heartache and so much of pain but she toiled on because the joy she gained from seeing the smile on someone else’s face was huge.

She had a son, a young man who believed that the whole world was conspiring against him. Raised with the same values his mother had he was taught that the needs of others came first. He was brought up to make sacrifices as his mother had done. He was taught to put his dreams on hold so someone else could live theirs through him. He was opinionated and always knew what he wanted to do, but he gave it all up because as he was always told – that was the right thing to do. Like his mother, he too lived through a lot of heartache and tears. Burdened with worries that he shouldn’t have had to deal with at such an age. He dealt with them and never felt sorry for himself for too long because – that was the right thing to do.

That would be their story… Now I’ll tell you another one, also of a mother and son.

She was a strong woman who had a plan for the future. She mapped out where her life would be in the years that would come and she put everything she had into making sure she got there. She wouldn’t fall prey to the tricks of relatives who only wanted money. She was smarter than that. She broke the rules of society to find her happiness because no one was going to give her any otherwise. She could judge people from a mile away and understood what game they were playing even before speaking with them.

Her son was cold compared her. He lived by the principle that if you were heading out to make someone else happy, you need to be happy first. He blamed himself for the mistakes he made and would leave nothing to chance. He lived his dreams to the fullest and would unleash a darker side of himself on anyone who decided to stand in his way. There were no rules in his life and all that mattered was to live as though life ended tomorrow.

I could never understand how these two pairs of people could ever have anything in common. I’ve written for you very short descriptions of their lives and even through them, connecting the two pairs seems like a bit of a stretch doesn’t it? But there is one crucial point that connects these two pairs, both are the same people. The same mother. The same son. The same lifetime.  Funny ain’t it?

Everyone agrees that people change. But what I’ve found the strangest is that the very people who make such statements are amusingly offended when others change. Hmmm.

B.