The Breaking Point

As I stood in line at Starbucks the other day, I saw a 3-year-old sobbing in her mother’s arms. This wasn’t a head-banging tantrum, but she had obviously hit that point of falling apart. The conversation went something like:

Girl: But I want the white kind of chocolate milk.
Mom: They don’t have it here. They are making you a special drink.
Girl: But I only want the white one.
Mom: We’ll get it the next time we visit Grandma.
Me: I suppose we all have our breaking point.

I’ve been thinking about this since that incident. It is true that most of us don’t burst into tears when we can’t have the food or drink we want. But at the same time, there’s probably at least one thing that pushes each of us over the emotional edge to the point where all we can do is sob.

For me it is usually associated with an occasional fall that leaves me scared and sometimes physically hurt. It’s that helpless feeling of being out of control of your destiny. It’s a feeling of wanting to be held and comforted by a mom.

Usually some sort of distraction is all that it takes to turn a hopeless situation like this around. In the case of the little girl, I commented on her pretty pink dress that so nicely matched her flip-flops and headband. She mustered a smile and said she had picked out her dress. So the white chocolate milk had taken a back burner.

Is there something in particular that pushes your buttons to the point where you just can’t deal with it other than by falling apart? What defines your breaking point?