Sometime this afternoon I will be standing before my stove, manipulating my pan hence and forth, shaking sizzling butter under layers of eggs, milk and flour. This cheerful self-entertainment, supported by adequate music, will further brighten my day already much enlightened by rest and peacefulness.

On my way to the kitchen, I will shed the last shadows of uncertainty about how to handle the drama evolving in my close environment in the past few weeks.

Off will go the worry that the neatest self-balance may hide a decreasing self-confidence and increasing loneliness, possibly exacerbated by a recent life event; off will go the worry that frustrated ambition and unshared social and cultural moral codes stand in the way of mutual understanding and cooperation; off will go the worry that distance and an idealistic longing for reduced world misery and inequality are creating heart ache otherwise sootheable by good company; off will go the worry that lack of “outside” experience and first-hand knowledge of social diversity may be active cause in uncertainty and procrastination; off will go the worry, lately acute, that limerence may impede constructive social development and life progression…

The cost of loving is empathy and shared aches; but why is it that I should feel as if I had a role to play besides acknowledging their personal situations? There is no problem in need to be solved, only individual life experiences to be supported — as time and opportunities allow, and not through the darkness of worries and stress. After all, the moral pressure I feel is my construction, since I am the only one to consider “us” family.

This was today’s enlightenment. Drama has quickly followed television on the list of things I have decided long ago to do without. Now behold, here come the pancakes!