Searching for Directions

My younger sister has taken on a boarder named Edward, almost 20 years old, whom I met a few days ago, and had the opportunity to hear his story, which goes something like this: he and my nephew and a third boy had been best friends since grade school except the third boy was hit by a garbage truck on Congress Ave while riding his bike and was killed; my nephew witnessed a murder up close and personal; Edward was walking on Lamar and was struck by a hit and run driver, suffering severe head trauma. The head trauma was followed by followed by migraines, hallucinations, then a diagnosis of schizophrenia, hospitalizations, all this while grappling with the fear of being gay and finding no peer or parental support. A rough time. He's now stabilized and is searching for work, so I hired him for the day to wash windows and do some yard work. I was definitely playing the role of the Big Brother Mentor sort of thing that I'm not particularly familiar with, so I just played it by ear and did my best and I think it went quite well. I listened, I answered questions and gave feedback when prompted, and worked alongside him for many hours. We got a lot accomplished. There has been a slight escalation in my interactions with younger folks of late, and I feel especially responsible to set as best an example as I can and dispense the best advice I can when asked to do so. In the end, we make our own decisions and choose our paths, but I do think that every little interaction along the way can have sway over us, positive and negative, significant or trivial. Life swirls and spins, cycles and recycles all around us, throughout our worlds and the planet as a whole. Pretty fascinating. I find that everyone, no matter their age or circumstance, no matter their journey or history, deep inside longs for love and acceptance. We want our experiences to be meaningful and nourishing and we want to feel loved. We want to be heard and acknowledged. We want confirmation of our innate goodness. Sometimes these deep longings are left impoverished and starving. We want answers to the profound questions of life. The answers may be right in front of us but we haven't yet learned to see them. We want a guiding hand to reach out to us in our moments of darkness and pull us back into some kind of light. Sometimes the guiding hand leads us deeper into darkness. I know that Edward will go and buy drugs with the money he earned, but he assures me he will only play with the natural ones, as if that offers up some sort of organic consolation. Many times I had to say no thank you, I do not want to have a mushroom or hemp experience, I don't want to heighten my awareness in that way. Yet I felt I didn't have the right to judge or criticize. Oh what a world. Just some morning musings.