ir a principal |
Ir a lateral
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.
Love.
Seventeen minutes and twelve seconds later and the parasol is in full bloom and the sand is still bottle-necked in the hourglass. Time, has replaced the message with its clock face and its arrow hands, cupped full of the matter of shattered glass. There's beaches of it, and you and I are swimming ceaselessly in it. All the time. I may ask myself what is going to happen within the next fifteen seconds, but will realise by then that by the time I would have thought about it, I would have lost my time thinking about it, and with that, my mind. And you would leave me behind, to drown in my contradiction. I'm not impressed.
But you come back for me, anyway.
When there's a piece you hide inside,
You don't know anything, anything
About the world outside your emptiness.
Hearing shot whispers, voices bellowing
Are cries of fear of being loved
For who you are, for who you are,
For who this damn confusion knows its spark.
And something tells me you won't know,
You won't care less to know what's right
Unless you break the chains that you're still tying yourself in.
Please, don't give up the fight now,
There's a guiding light, a path for you to take
And that's the way the wind is blowing
That's the way your love is flowing, away.
Cruelty keeps a place of hate in the abyss
Where your heart once used to be, to belong,
And it doesn't want you to come back, it doesn't want you at all.
But it needs you to survive
The pain you kept inside it wants too,
Yet you have to make the livid choice
To live or die by prayers you make, for your sake.
How do I know,
That you'll be here,
When I come back?
You'll still be near
And not fall away
Not broken
Not shattered
Not ashamed
Not in pain
But okay. Okay.
'Til then you might only peace undisturbed
But yours certainly will be tainted.
You can't run away forever
And you can't light all speed.
You have to take your chances
And throw them all into your fire
Out of the sparkles and heat
Will come alive, again, a bird.
As it flies away, you'll be on its back
And you'll spend the life together,
No ashes will carry in the wind
That's tearing your dreams apart.
Oh, don't confuse yourself any further
Truth is but a wingspan away
Bring it into the horizon,
And let it shine the darkness into day.
Come. It's time.
Love gets you nothing.
If I were to leave that be, you might feel as if you had been struck by a pessimistic and/or depressed bolt of emotion. But, there is a continuation.
Love gets you nothing, it gives you everything.
We talk about love as if it's the most cliché cliché and yet the most sought after thing in the world. It's everywhere, yet we look for it in places we can't find it. This does not make sense. And it is upon this realisation that I have stumbled upon with the help and guidance of "A Course In Miracles."
To paraphrase "Entre les Murs", "Je ne sais pas pourquoi nous faisons ce que nous faisons." I could say it in many ways but possibilities are endless, and certainty, quite frankly, is certain. I am going to talk now from what I have learned.
We build bridges to the world. We climb mountains, proverbial and otherwise. We overcome adversity. We compromise. We seek out a life purpose. We search for other people. We search within people for similarity. We push other people away by shutting our eyes at their similarity. We form groups. We exclude, but we want to be included. We have arrived at a point where we exclude to include, which doesn't make sense. We go to war. We blame somebody else for an illusory reality that lies in our own heads. We shove guilt down someone else's throat because we don't want our own illusory crap because it's illusory crap. We use colloquialisms to fit into society. We conform to convention to be included. We exclude those who do not fit into the social conventions. We envy those who do not fit into the social conventions. We fight those people. We fight each other. We laugh at each other. We feel wronged by the world. We seek to be accepted. We seek to be at peace. We attack other people. We want our peace to come to us. We push our peace away. We look at each other and choose to ignore what we see in the mirror. We bombard the surface of the world, of other people. We dig into the core of weakness. We fashion masks to protect our egos. We fail at succeeding to find what we really want. We succeed at failing to see the truth. We see each other and ourselves as torn and confused and shattered and tired and bruised and wounded and pathetic and apathetic and hopeless and surpassed and distraught and shocked and mournful and lost and forgetful and ignorant and insensitive and obnoxious and stubborn and unmoving and unbending and gluttonous and defiant and disrespectful and scared. We don't know what we are doing and why we are doing what we are doing. But we know one thing. We want to be whole. We want to rise up and rejoice and be present and joyful and meaningful and at peace and to embrace synonymy.
We think we are alone, but we are not. We think we are hurt, but we are not. We think we are cursed, but we are not. We think we are worthless, but we are not. We think we are nuisances, but we are not. We think we are better, but we are not. We think we are worse, but we are not. We think we are unloved, but we are not. Amidst this confusion, lies the truth. We all want the same thing and feel the same-sized love-shaped gap within ourselves.
The gap is not there, and we realise it is not there by testing it. Not by feeling sorry or guilty or ashamed or depressed at our seeming incompleteness. We know love, by doing things that require love. By being who we are and letting others be who they are. Those bridges are made of love. We are lost, which means we have simply forgotten, so we must remember. We do this by giving. Love is for giving. Love is forgiving. Love is everywhere, but we look for it as if it weren't there. But it is. Open your eyes. I am standing in the same boat as you. We are sailing on the same sea. And I am glad we are on this journey together.
