The father walks into the living room carrying two cups of tea, steam threading upward from both. He sets them on the coffee table.

“You said you wanted tea.”

The son looks up from his book.

“I boiled the water one after the other,” the father continues, settling into his chair. “This one”—he taps the cup on the left—”has cooled longer. You should drink this one. The other is still too hot. You’ll burn yourself.”

The son’s eyes move between the cups. They look the same. He cannot see the danger his father sees.

He’s already decided for me. Before I’ve even touched them.

“I can wait for it to cool.”

“But this one is ready now. Why wait when I’ve already solved the problem for you? I’m trying to help you. I have more experience with these things.” The father smiles, kind and loving. 

He’s helping. He’s always helping.

The son shakes his head and reaches for the cup on the right: the hot one.

“Not that one.” His father’s voice sharpens. “I just told you. You’ll hurt yourself.”

Does he think I didn’t hear him? Or does he think I’m too stupid to understand?

The son’s hand hovers, suspended. “How hot is it?”

“Too hot. That’s why I’m telling you which one to take.”

“But how do you know what’s too hot for me?”

The father leans forward. “Because I’m your father. Because I’ve been drinking tea for thirty years and I know what burns and what doesn’t. I’m trying to help you.”

The words are followed by silence.

He says it’s too hot for me. He says he’s helping me. Protecting me. So why does it feel like he’s telling me I can’t be trusted with my own mouth?

The son pulls his hand back. He doesn’t reach for either one of them now.

“Why are you upset?” The father’s confusion is genuine. “I made you tea. I’m helping you not burn yourself!”

“Why?”

“Because I love you! And I want you to make the right choice.”

Is that it? Is this what love looks like? The son stares at the two cups. He gave me two options. But only one is right. So actually, he only gave me one option and a mistake. He gave me a choice between obedience and failure.

“If you love me,” he says quietly, “why don’t you trust me?”

“I do trust you. That’s not what this is about.”

Then why does it feel like you don’t?

“Then why can’t I choose?”

“You can choose. I’m just telling you which choice is right.”

If there’s a right choice and a wrong choice, and you’ve already told me which is which, then what am I choosing? I’m just following instructions. That’s not choice. 

The son looks at his father. He sees the furrow between his eyebrows. The tension is growing in his shoulders.

He’s afraid. He’s always afraid. Afraid I’ll burn myself. Afraid I’ll make the wrong choice. Afraid I’ll hurt.

“If I can choose, then both choices have to be okay.”

“But they’re not both okay. One will hurt you.”

I’m already hurting. 

“Maybe. Or maybe I’ll wait for it to cool. Or maybe I’ll sip it carefully. Or maybe I’ll burn my tongue and learn something.” The son’s voice cracks. “But you’ve already decided I’m too stupid to figure that out myself.”

“I never said that—”

“You didn’t have to.”

You said it every time you told me which cup to drink. Every time you gave me a choice and then told me which one was right. How could you love me if you don’t trust me? And if the reason you tell me which is the right choice is because you love me, is that you threatening you’ll stop doing it if I make the wrong one?

The silence expands between them.

My father had presented me with two options and their outcomes. I feel like he does not trust me that I can make good choices to begin with. I am hurt because he does not trust me. He also said that he loves me and wants me to make the right choice, because the wrong one will hurt me. I feel hurt right now…so that must mean I have made a wrong choice somewhere along the line. The reason my father tells me what is right is because he loves me, and if I did something wrong it means that my father does not love me. Or rather, he does not love me as much as he would have if I made the right choice.

The father feels there is something turning behind his son’s eyes, but every word he’d muttered so far back to him does nothing but make him question everything he thought he understood about him.

Why would he go against my advice? He asks himself, but cannot answer it. The only thing he knows for certain is that his son is looking at him the way you look at a stranger, and that somehow, in trying to protect him from a moment of pain, he has created something worse.

“I just want what’s best for you,” the father says, and even as he speaks, the words feel hollow.

“What if what’s best for me is learning what’s best for me?”

The father opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. But I am helping you so you don’t have to! He keeps the words to himself.

He doesn’t understand. He’ll never understand. The son picks up the cup on the left—the safe one, the right one—and takes a sip. It’s lukewarm. Pleasant. Exactly what his father promised.

He was right about the temperature. He’s always right about things like that, but being right isn’t the same as trusting me. And love without trust feels like…this lukewarm tea I didn’t choose for myself. 

“Thank you for the tea,” the son says. His voice is quiet, polite, and distant as he sets the cup down.

The father smiles, relieved. “See? I knew that was the right one.”

But if you really loved me, you’d let me burn. If you loved me, you’d trust that I could handle the burning. That I’m strong enough. That you raised someone capable of making the right choice for themselves. But the son doesn’t say this. He returns to his book, and the father returns to his tea. 

The distance between them remains just as rigid and controlled, as safe and polite as it was moments before. Neither of them knows how to break it.

The father is convinced he has done everything right. He made the tea. He gave the warning. He offered his wisdom, because he loves his son. And he is struggling to understand why his “thank you” sounds more like a goodbye.

Across, the son turns a page he doesn’t read. His tea grows cold in front of him.

I don’t want tea anymore. I don’t want safety. I don’t want to be protected, I want to be trusted. I want to be seen as someone who can control their own life. I want love that doesn’t come with instructions, and to know that I’ll be loved even when I’m seen making the wrong choice. But he doesn’t say this either. He just sits there, with his father in the same room, drinking the same tea.

Miles apart.

__________________________________________________________

How many times can you say ‘I love you’ before it stops meaning love, and starts meaning obey?

When we insist on protecting someone from all wrong choices, we tell them they are not capable of surviving their own life. When we justify control with love, we teach that love is something you earn by being small enough to fit inside someone else’s fear.

True love is not protection. True love is trust.

And trust means letting go.

Justifying why we do things makes doing things conditional. And conditionals constrict. If we are constricted, we are not free.
If you introduce a condition where you justify doing something out of love, it means that you would not have done the same if you didn’t have that love. Just like you wouldn’t have walked outside with an open umbrella if it was not raining.

Justification is defined as: 1. the action of showing something to be right or reasonable.
Something being right or reasonable is not the same as it being the truth, and the definition above alone means that justification is an act closer to the one of convincing. Convincing is only required when understanding, agreement and trust are not present. Truth is not something that requires convincing or justifying, because it is the truth. It is observable and incontestable. You know that if you put an ice cube in the sun, it will melt. There are no variables or conditions. It’s the truth.