The world is full of broken souls. Some souls are broken early, by cruel or neglectful caretakers. If you are a baby who does not get comforted, or fed, regularly, your tiny soul will get a few deep cracks, always there as you grow. Others are broken later by life itself, injury, sickness, disability, bad luck, death of a particular loved one, abuse, meeting the wrong person at the wrong time and things going badly, and then the depressing pattern repeating.

We are all broken in some way, at least everyone I’ve ever met. The popular goal of achieving a state of permanent happiness appears to be an illusion. Can we remain happy when we read the latest accounts of babies killed, women and girls raped at gunpoint, explosions killing random innocent people in the name of one god or another, popular politicians angrily promising retribution and a return to the good old days of vast concentration camps for all enemies? Chasing after the abstraction of happiness, like the single-minded pursuit of “success” or wealth, is a kind of myopic idiocy, it seems to me. As my ex’s guru put it so poetically: chasing happiness is like a deer who runs after a mirage of water and dies of thirst. Well said, Babaji.

We love others in spite of their brokenness. We help each other heal a bit, by the application of a steady, empathetic love we all need. Every human being has a need for this healing connection to others, being given the benefit of the doubt and treated with kindness. Too many of us live without it, or even the hope for it. This precious love can be perverted, it turns out, when desperate souls place it on a scale against loyalty, righteous grievance and an appeal to harsh judgment and anger. It is a complicated business, being a decent, loving human being.

I think of my cousin Eli, my father’s first cousin. He was a very loving man, though he was rough, volatile, prone to fits of rage, capable of violence, estranged from his children, filled with hatred at times. I say he was very loving because he always showed that side, with warmth and humor, to me and to my mother before me. Both my mother and I fought with him regularly, vehemently sometimes, and in the end we always smiled, kissed and hugged and looked forward to our next battle. It was the complete recovery from our conflict, every time, no matter how fierce the fight had just been, that continually proved our love for each other.

You can look at a guy like Eli, conclude he’s dangerously nuts, give him a wide berth and have only the most polite and superficial interactions with him. Or you can see part of yourself reflected in him, a need to be heard, to have a strong opinion, to duke it out whenever you feel unfairly challenged, and above all, a need for reconciliation and reassurances of love. There was nothing false about my mother’s love for Eli or his love for her. They would each do anything for each other. But accept something from the other that struck them as bullshit? Why would they do that?

So in spite of our brokenness, we can form strong bonds, find love, set boundaries, overlook terrible faults in another because we also feel the steadiness of their love. Love is a stronger thing than happiness, which changes according to circumstances. We may get angry at someone we love, but the love remains. If it can be destroyed by a single conflict, eradicated by unyielding anger, it was not very sturdy, healthy love to begin with. It was the best our broken self was capable of finding at the time we first felt love toward that person.

As we grow, ideally we learn more about ourselves and the reasonable limits of our tolerance for the brokenness of those around us. Those who can’t acknowledge their own pain are the most dangerous motherfuckers on the planet. No amount of love can save someone who is hellbent on never being wrong, always being some childish notion of “perfect”. Can you imagine a love that can truly help a poor devil like that?