Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Conversations

I found myself having conversations about honesty, about sharing the truth and just whom you can safely share it with.  In some moments I distrust my own heart.  My thoughts are conflicted.  It seems I will forever be self judging.  I may never get it right.

 I want to reduce the amount of judgement I bring into my life.  I judge others by claiming that they judge (me)?  It's all too weird.  Maybe that's why we all love little children so much.  They are not yet conflicted.  Their needs are pretty straight forward and they haven't succumb to double think, double talk.  They are learning to manipulate, but mostly out of the need to survive.

My fear is that I manipulate to survive as well.  But it is the survival of Ego, far from the realm of basic need.  The survival of my self view ( that I am good ) is critical to me.  What I say is designed in part to keep me on this "good " side.  I want to just listen, be present, and stop using conversations to validate my "goodness".

There were a few conversations about "pausing", I tried to listen, but I'm pretty large.  I want more humility and less judgement in my life.  How am I ever going to learn this?  Do you ever want to rewind?  Tomorrow is a chance to try it over again and do better.


The Pain Stops


The Pain Stops: when you stop looking at the person you love as the person that you love, and you begin to see them, not as a partner, a lover, or a best friend, but as a human being with the strengths and weaknesses and even the core of a child.
The Pain Stops: when you begin to accept that what you would do in a circumstance is not what they would do, and that no matter how much you try, they have to learn their own lessons, and they have to touch the stove when it's hot, just as you did, to learn that it is much better when it is cool.
The Pain Stops: when your longing for them gets slowly replaced by a desire to get away, when making love to them no longer makes you feel cherished, when you find yourself tired of waiting for the moments where the good will truly outweigh the bad, and when at the end of the day you can't count on their arms for comfort.
The Pain Stops: when you start to look inward and decide whether their presence is a gift or a curse, and whether when you need them, they cause more heartache than bliss.
The Pain Stops: when you realize that you deserve more than they offer and stop blaming them for being less than you wish. When the smile of a stranger seems more inviting and kind, and you remember what it is like to feel beautiful, and you remember how long it has been since your lover whispered something in your ear that only the two of you would know.
The Pain Stops: when you forgive them for their faults and forgive yourself for staying so long. When you know that you tried harder than you ever tried before, and you know in your heart that love should not be so much work.
The Pain Stops: when you start to look in the mirror and like who you see, and know that leaving them or losing them is no reflection of your beauty or your worth.
The Pain Stops: when the promise of a new tomorrow is just enough to start replacing the emptiness in your heart, and you start dreaming again of who you used to be and who you will become.
The Pain Stops: when you say goodbye to what never really was, and accept that somewhere in the fog you may or may not have been loved back. And you promise yourself never again to lay in arms that don't know how to cherish the kindness in your heart.
The Pain Stops: when you are ready.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Leave it to Bob Dylan


Erich Fromm, The Objects of Love

"Love is not primarily a relationship to a specific person; it is an attitude, an orientation  of character which determines the relatedness of a person to the world as a whole, not toward one "object" of love. If a person only loves one other person and is indifferent to the rest of his fellow men, his love is not love but a symbiotic attachment, or an enlarged egotism."

I have begun reading, or re-reading, Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving. I know I studied his writing in college but to read it again forty years later is another task altogether.  With some luck we all will have a life long enough to find some understanding about subjects like..love. When picturing love most of us see a corny image of entwined lovers, that's what appeared when I googled it and that's what we are sold in our culture.
"In contrast to the symbiotic union, mature love is union under the condition of preserving one's integrity, one's individuality.  Love is an active power in man; a power which breaks through the walls which separate man from his fellow men , which unites him with others; love makes him overcome the sense of isolation and separateness, yet it permits him to be himself, to retain his integrity.  In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two."