Human beings are arrogant creatures prone to pessimism. We do not want to take responsibility for our own sorry circumstances or failures nor are we willing to simply attribute these things to chance. So we find others to blame and we invent conspiracies. The self is perfect, of course, but a victim. When in the company of others with similar failures and sorry circumstances, we find solace. When politicians step in to encourage our doubt and provide false state-mandated remedies, identity politics is born.

The American ideas of equality, liberty, self-reliance, opportunity, and perseverance are antithetical to the corrosive despair of victimhood. Our citizens are not victims, but individuals with the liberty and power, with the responsibility, to pursue their own happiness.

Some time back, it was popular to talk about the “Five Love Languages,” the ways in which a person shows his or her love to someone else. I was always kind of resistant, partially because I reflexively suspect categorization as being a somewhat fuzzy and lazy tool, especially when applied to relationships. Or as the Babylon Bee puckishly “reported,” Husband Declares His Love Language is Marathoning All the ‘Lord of the Rings’ Movies.

Still, there is no denying that people absolutely often express love through acts of service, affirming words, gifts, time, and touch. But that, at least to me, neither properly categorizes, nor even includes the most important language of love in a growing relationship: listening. Indeed, listening to the other person is not only important, but it is the gateway to having a successful relationship in the first place. Hearing the other person, and considering what she has to say, is the first and single most important step in any proper relationship. Everything that comes after that builds on that single foundation.

A local Vermont newspaper ran an incredibly touching obituary for a young woman, just two years younger than me, who finally succumbed to her addiction to opioids. Her father wrote the obituary, and explained how her addiction came to pass,

Megan grew up in St. Albans and Georgia, Vt., participating in dance and swimming. She proved to be an adventuresome reader and a fearless jumper off cliffs. But on July 1, 2005, she was once again at a cliff on Eagle Bay in Burlington. I was sitting at my desk on the first day of a new job, and a Vermont State Policeman called to tell me to drive to the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center. I was told that she had been pushed off the cliffs and hit the rocks below … with her face. Having been rescued by a man in a kayak and EMTs, she was being stitched up, and her jaw was wired shut. They suspected a TBI, but when they prescribed her liberal doses of opiates, she lost control of her life. She would be in and out of rehab — and jail — for the next 14 years.