It’s the first week in July, and we are halfway through our summer break. This week it finally feels like we’re on vacation. The month of June was filled with traveling from place to place and one football tournament after another, and The Greatest Kid On The Planet is tired. So is his mom. But, today, we are relaxing by the shore in one of our favorite places with some of our favorite people. The ocean is quiet this morning, and it looks lazy, as if reluctant to make too much effort in the early morning sun. But I know, soon enough, the tide will awaken, and we will spend the afternoon hours floating in the waves. It’s a break The Greatest Kid really needs for, in just a matter of days, he will be back on the football field. He is learning life doesn’t get easier as you get older and start chasing your dreams. I find myself clinging to these moments as I watch him growing into the man he is to become. I know the days of long, lazy summer vacations are over, at least for the time being, and while I miss those days, I would never trade away where we are now. I know the best is yet to come.

As I’m sitting here searching the ocean for answers, I’m contemplating a conversation I had a short time ago with a young woman named Jayna. When Jayna first wrote to me, she had just ended a two year long relationship.

Jayna had read my previous post about letting go and moving past the pain, and she said that was where she currently was. And then she said something curious.

“I don’t know why I held on for so long when I knew from the beginning it wasn’t right.”

I asked Jayna what she meant, and she answered that, for a long time, she’d thought, or, at least, she’d convinced herself, that it could and would get better. But it never did.

“I had this perfect picture in my mind, and I kept hoping for that. In the end, it was just a disaster, and I feel like I wasted two years of my life. I should have left sooner.”

I wonder how many of us wind up saying those same words at some point. And I wonder, why do we do it? Why do we stay even when it doesn’t feel right?

Hindsight, they say, is twenty-twenty. But is it truly all hindsight? Or do we own some of it from the start?

One thing I think is true for all of us is that we all want to be loved and to feel affection, and to experience a genuine connection with another person. We’re wired for it. We’re wired for connection and communication, and we all desire and deserve to be heard and seen and valued and understood.

But I also think that, sometimes, we want it so badly we ignore what’s right in front of us, and we pretend we don’t see what we see.