Books, Love, and Randomness
Thu ,07/01/2010This has not been an easy week for me, as most weeks where I have to deal with certain situations rarely, if ever, are. This week has been filled with a veritable plethora of difficult situations. This time however, I’ve been managing to make a lot of positive headway on how I handle myself in these situations, and I think it would be fair to say, I’m seeing a lot of positive results because of this. As somebody recently said, when I wear confidence and tilt my chin and move forward, it looks real good on me. I couldn’t agree more. It FEELS real good on me.
Last night, I received two books in the mail. One, is a book I’ve been DYING to read for quite some time: “Celtic Tree Mysteries: Secrets of the Ogham” by Steve Blamires. The other was a gift from a friend of mine, and is the next book in a series I’m reading. The book is “The Singing Sword” by Jack Whyte. I’m really excited to have new books to read! I’m a voracious reader, and though I love all the books in my library, it wears a bit after the second or third thousandth time through them all. 
In my last post, “The Numinous and Worship“, I mentioned a passage from the book “Contact”, by Carl Sagan, that dealt with the main character falling in love. I’d like to share that, directly below.
“Their conversations were a joy, with ideas flying back and forth like shuttlecocks. Sometimes they responded to each other’s uncompleted thoughts with almost perfect foreknowledge. He was a considerate and inventive lover. And anyways, she liked his pheromones.
She was sometimes amazed at what she was able to do and say in his presence, because of their love. She came to admire him so much that his love for her affected her own self-esteem: She liked herself better because of him. And since he clearly felt the same, there was a kind of infinite regress of love and respect underlying their relationship. At least, that was how she described it to herself. In the presense of so many of her friends, she had felt an undercurrent of loneliness. With Ken it was gone.
She was comfortable describing to him her reveries, snatches of memories, childhood embarrassments. And he was not merely interested, but fascinated. He would question her for hours about her childhood. His questions were always direct, sometimes probing, but without exception gentle. She began to understand why lovers talk baby talk to one another. Ther was no other socially acceptable circumstance in which the children inside her were permitted to come out. If the one-year-old, the five-year-old, the twelve-year-old, and the twenty-year-old all find compatible personalities in the beloved, there is a real chance to keep all of these sub-personas happy. Love ends their long loneliness. Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship. With her previous partners, it seemed, at most one of these selves was able to find a compatible opposite number; the other persona were grumpy hangers-on.”
As I had mentioned earlier, this had struck a chord for me, having found that within these past couple years ith someone, after a lifetime of searching, and eventually giving up. Man, but the Gods can be cruel when they finally give us what we most desire. Along with the joy of the finding, came a terrible fear and despair of ever being able to grab onto that, and guilt for having to extricate myself from the committed relationship I was already in to realize it fully. I guarantee you, I spent quite a long time hoping to find it with the woman I was already with, out of the love I still shared with her, and the love she still felt for me.
Why do we fight so hard, to force ourselves to go against what is obvious? What was awakened in me, was awakened by this new person, but I hoped maybe it could be transferred to my now ex-wife. She would tell me how much she was in love ith me, would tell me how much she ould change for me, even made certain changes. It was hard facing that, because the more she changed, the more she opened up her lines of communication, the more in her I saw the person I had initially fallen in love with, and the more compatible she became to what I was looking for out of life. Throw in the fact that she was and is the mother of my two children, and the difficulties in walking away from her were increased exponentially. How could I do this to somebody who loved and needed me that much? Did I not OWE it to her, to find the same feelings for her? And let me tell you, I came close to finding it. REAL close. Maybe we COULD “make it work”. Despite all that, I couldn’t seem to do it. Through time, I came to realize, that the feelings I felt, that I were awakened to, were not because of her, and aren’t transferable. And even though I could find almost everything else for her, I couldn’t find that one part that said, “Yes.”
Why do we fight so hard to force ourselves to fill those roles that others hope for us? We show amazing compassion for others, and yet, we show very little compassion to ourselves. For me, the reason I could not tell my ex-wife “yes”, was because she was not the person that that part of my heart was saying “yes” for.. the same one that awakened those emotions in me for in the first place. It wasn’t her face I saw in those moments with her. The Gods are cruel. But, they also are kind, because I DID feel that for someone, in all those ways, even if it didn’t lessen the hurt or acceptance I still had to find. And they were kind, because they allowed my ex-wife to see that was what was real in MY heart, that while I loved her, I couldn’t love her in that way, not after being made aware of it more fully with somebody that TRULY awakened it in me. And my ex-wife, I loved her more than ever for allowing me to have that, for loving me enough to let me find that true happiness, even if it wasn’t with her. And you know, it hasn’t been easy, because when I see her with the man she is with now, she reminds me more and more of what I hoped she and I could have. But I’ve been chasing the future that is real in my heart now, the one that speaks to all those parts of me, and dealing with the pain that comes from walking away from my past as it comes. The pain lessens with time, the healing begins, when there is acceptance of the truth. Yes I love her, yes I see so much good in her, and yes, we could probably have made a better go at things, but no…. that is not where my heart was pointing me. Only after I acknowledged that direction, and she acknowledged my direction as well, was I able to truly move on. She made it easy for me, and I’m grateful. She probably could have sat there every single day from then until now, begging me to stay, and I would have not had an easy time at all walking away. To say the least.
Compassion is a good thing, but there comes a time when one has to let others deal with the reality on their own terms, without standing in the way of that. And here, the compassionate thing is to let them figure that out for themselves, without you trying to hold their hand through it, and without sharing your fears back and forth beteen each other. Feedback loops are powerfull, patterned, and cyclical. Just as there can be a loop and regress of love beteen true lovers, there can also be loops of fear that never move anybody forward. So sometimes, compassion in a situation means having the compassion to walk away, to be quiet, and to let the other person see the truth for themselves. It can mean having the compassion to put your own hopes to the side, and acknowledging that in reality, they’re not returned. Sometimes compassion is having to do the hard things, that hurt the most now, instead of the easy things, that hurt more and more in the long run.
Deep stuff, and stuff I’ve been working on in myself. Having the compassion to let others see the truth for themselves, and having trust that the Gods will bring me beauty, whatever the outcome. It’s hard, but I’m following an ecstatic path… with the ecstasy, comes the hard work. And though it’s hard, I can honestly say that I am truly living my life now, and not waiting on the world to make things happen for me. I’m taking control of my life, and it feels amazing.
ON TO THE RANDOMNESS!
My “W” key is on the fritz, and I never really realized how often that letter is used!
I hate Wordpress’s textbox for typing posts, as it is constantly scrolling back to the top of the post, and typing in it it seems to be about one character a second hitting the screen.
I’m considering removing email notifications of new posts, as I often think it keeps people from wanting to come and comment.
I’m trying to integrate Google Friend Connect, to make it EASIER for people to come and comment.
I like comments.
I’m thinking of creating a new blog to dedicate my posts about my relationship to Herne with.
I really like watching The Office, Bones, and Heroes.
Happy Thursday all.