Shit-shat

I seem to seek out relationships that fall under my categorisation of 'deep and meaningful'. Apparently, to me, that is the form of relationship that not only lasts longest but offers me most opportunity for growth.

I think I was under the influence of idealism when I made up that cockamamie criteria. I did not realise that I was unconsciously trying to fit every single friendship I had into that tight box which visually I picture as a plastic bottle rim that remains on the bottle after the lid is taken off. So, I feel ashamed, though I should cease judgment, to admit that it's really what I look for in all relationships - the capability of space and depth so the meanings of life can come through. I've been missing the point of communication. No wonder I feel lonely, but I think I had been too proud to look at myself in the mirror and see that how I was seeing other people was truly under a microscope that sought to penetrate through the skin to their core, a core I would have taken as a prize for my triumph over mediocrity. Pride again.

The realisation came to me this evening, sparked off by words a friend who said, after listening to what I had been saying about anxiety and borders between people and my fears that it was difficult to transcend them, that to him everyone is his friend. It's a simple attitude, a perspective, yet somehow I'd erased it from my consciousness from when I was younger. I am nice and respectful to others, yet from about the start of this year, I've been unable to properly connect with new people, save for some, because I'd always be thinking about what they were thinking about me or how I should act so that I don't budge any of their social protocols. I've trained myself to see these barriers, and thus believe in them as if they were real, so now instead of seeing faces I see walls with faces behind them. And my attempts are muffled as the sound refracts.

I resorted then to a method of connection that was deeper than skin, and thus not conveyable via words, though I tried that way, too. My friend respectfully, honestly and correctly pointed out to me towards the end of our dialogue, that I try too much to connect too deeply with people I barely know. This comes partly from the belief that I'd been attempting to learn that everyone is, within, the same, one. Mostly, I believe it comes from stubbornness and fear, a combination that disallows me the comfort of 'chit-chat' in favor of 'heart-to-heart'. I'm almost too keen to have heart-to-heart conversations because I feel more comfortable discussing the meanings of life and whatnot, in my pride thinking such things mean much more than 'petty' things that people talk about, from food, to the weather, to what happened yesterday. But in truth, 'hidden meanings' have no more meaning than 'meaningless banter'. That's because, save for rare occasions which subconsciously I believe I seek out in these attempts, introspection is based on my own semantics and thus just shows up more complex images of what I believe. To clarify, a cup can be a vessel of possibility, or it could just not match with a plate, both ways the meaning lying on different levels, and both missing the spaciousness before meaning where truth resides and reflects.

This is what I learned today - complexity is not only unnecessary but counter-intuitive. Life is simple, because there is only one truth. Trying to explain, analyse, understand this, is making nothing out of everything. I had been skipping rungs on the ladder of reaching people, believing myself able to simply go to the 'meaningful' shit without going through the 'chit-chat'. Yet I see it everyday, 'chit-chat', on Facebook, on the street, on TV, among people I know. I do it, too, but there's situations where I somehow believe myself capable of transcending it, but all I'm really agreeing to is a more complex version of chit-chat, one which I'm supposedly better at because I can speak formally and write poetry and think about different perspectives. But this stuff, even at this level, doesn't mean shit. It's just advanced chit-chat. Shit-shat. Sometimes there is truth being pointed to, yes, but mostly it's just an egoic attempt at feeling superior to others because I'm so darn special and capable of speaking in such rhetoric that you can either awe at or participate in. You don't get to know me better that way though, you just get to know my ego.

Bullshit. People are people, not fulfillment-givers. And if we are all one, then we are all connected to each other anyway. Talk is just a way of becoming aware of that connection. Shit-shat is a fancy way of asserting I'm better than you. Which I am not, but my ego's suicidally argumentative. But I'm not my ego. I am not bitter as a host for the insane. I'm simply there.

That's what I want confirmed anyway though, that you're there, when I talk to you. I try to be there when you talk to me. Sometimes I'm out back watching my ego shit-shat with your face, and my attention's swiped. I have this big idea that when you talk to me I'm going to have an epiphany and you're going to give me the answers to the problem that I've labelled 'life'. And if we do get to have a heart-to-heart, it'll be idyllic and wonderful, and we'll be vulnerable but strong (but it will be more of an ego-to-ego, permissibly self-conscious only because one ego believes the other to be more flawed than itself).

I'm just trying to understand this, that's all. Or am I? I don't know. I'm still shit-shatting.