We bought Buddy a car today. Not just any car- a good car. We took a loan that he'll make payments on. The problem is, over the years we've poured more money into him than chicken soup, cough medicine, and good advice combined and all we've seen in return was bupkes. So why on Earth would we put another penny into the boy after all we've done for him and the kids?
That's a fair question with an unknown outcome. If I were to place a bet a year ago, I'd say we were sending good strudel after bad here but I have to acknowledge a couple of things. In many ways he's still very young and behaves more akin to a teenager. Things like short sighted goals, quick emotional shifts, making bad decisions based on unclear information. But after a year mixed together in a stable household, the parameters of our world are more clearly defined and have given him a chance to shed some bad past behaviors and become a real participant instead of a tenant. He's part of a family pooling its resources to survive and this car deal will save us all money over him going it alone and so put more cash in the household coffers.
But that's logic speaking and I have to rely on some intuition to navigate this. I can't be sure this won't blow ip in our face regardless of whether it makes sense or not. That's always been the past outcome. So I'm risking it again because of my gut feeling. The gut feeling that makes me believe this is a further step towards the family's success. It's the same gut feeling that told me the boys should all move in, the same gut that told me Tio's mom, Marcia, had changed to the better and the positives of reconnecting her with Tio outweighed the bad.
As it turns out, I'm taking the measure of my gut feelings much more than I ever used to. In the past, I would wind myself in knots trying to figure out all the angles, the logic, and the reason for doing everything. I realize now that can only take me so far. I need to trust some things to the gods and some things to intuition, and then let the rest take care of itself. It may not always work out but maybe that's not so terrible either.
