The Lovebug Season

They're everywhere for about six weeks, coupled up mid-air and utterly unbothered, and every trip to the grocery store ends with your bumper looking like a crime scene. There's no fighting lovebug season. You can't out-drive it, out-wash it, out-hate it — the only real move is patience, the kind that doesn't flinch or floor it, that just wipes the windshield again and keeps going. That's Strength in its truest form: not force, not aggression, just steady endurance against something relentless and small.

Something in your life today is going to be a low-grade, ongoing irritation — not a crisis, just a splatter you have to keep wiping clean. Don't waste energy raging at it. The gentle, repeated tending is the actual strength this moment is asking for.

You waited two hours in the car wash line for a fifteen-minute wash, and by the time you pulled out the front of your bumper had three new casualties before you'd even made it to the highway. Some fights against small, relentless things really are unwinnable in the short term, and pretending otherwise just burns your afternoon. The shadow of Strength is knowing when the gentle, patient approach has curdled into stubborn, wasted effort.

Today might have you throwing real time and energy at something that's going to keep coming back regardless. Notice the line you're standing in. Sometimes strength means walking away from the wash and just driving the dirty car until the season passes.