I have been finding my echo resonating from the most unlikely canyons. I spoke softly into the recesses of the past, and my own words & thoughts came back, resounding, in a voice calmer than I had previously known it to be.
And so if two people's thoughts mirror each others', validation being found, I can now ask: why?
Why do we label, box in, mold people? Why do we expect the unattainable, or rather why do we expect others to embody ideals we ourselves know we couldn't - let alone wouldn't - attain for others?
I lay in bed last night tabulating and self-reassuring, and tabulating some more and confirming that I was not fooling myself. Making sure that I hadn't done unto others as I wouldn't want done unto me - pointing fingers in the dark to see that whta I was in fact pointing to was a mirror.
And breathing, for the time being, a sigh of satisfied relief.
I had been good at - and with - non definition. And, it would seem, still am. Approaching people as they are and can be to me: think Kinsey's continuum, only the two extremes are friendship and partnership. They can't - and I don't expect them to be - either of two extremes in my life or disappointment will be quick to follow. In my mind, no one can fit the ideal of either label, primarily because these ideals (of friendship and partnership) are bound to transform at the rate of my self-affirmation. To, further, expect of an individual that he or she - or rather his or her enactment of their role in my life - adjust to these daily re-definitions (for what purpose? to have their response to myself validate my ability to perform my own will of being?) - would be a grave injustice to them, and a pretty irrefutable proof of my selfishness and lack of respect for both myself and those around me. Acting as such would diminish them to the state of mere pawns for the mind games I play with myself, strategically placed puppets waiting for their cue to enter the stage and pay their part in the theater of my life. Relationship would be nothing more than action/reaction, subect to object, leaving no room for equal exchange. They would become all things to me, and that much less to themselves. I would love them not for who they bring to the table, ideally themselves, but rather what I shape them into being. Who they will be for me, what I will help them to become. For better or worse, til death, or the resurfacing of lucidity and self-awareness, do us part.
To put it simply; I fully recognise that other people were not placed in my life to service me. We all have better things to do than bend and fold to other's expectations of us.
Love is... the ability to cherish and value an other for what they bring and add to your experience as a human being. Synergy. Allowing them to agree with you when they can, challenge you when they feel you and them may not be perfectly in line. It is a lot of dialogue, and a lot of vulnerability, realising that even the closest you can find to your match may not always be a perfect fit. No two individuals are alike, and once again, if what you are searching is you in a different incarnation - buy a mirror. Ideally Queen Elspeth's.
People do not naturally fit any other mold than the one their own lives cast for them. And even then, we are but hermit crabs - as they switch shells we switch molds when we have outgrown the previous one. The artist knows that to remain ahead, one must be in a state of constant re-invention. Too many individuals find fallacy in contradicting self, yet isn't it also true that only fools never change their minds? Granted, a comfortable life does not always require change - eventually, we all gel and become complacent, for lack of anything in our environment challenging us to better ourselves... And with change comes a discomfort most would rather live without, failing to see the exhiliration that comes with it.
I recall, to my dismay, finding great satisfaction in pulling hermit crabs from their shells during family vacations by the sea. Although, it was always to ease them into nicer, more spacious shells. I always made sure they were able to remain mobile and that their new shells weren't too heavy for them, a burden in disguise. And then I'd leave them be, let them go on with their little hermit crab lives - having played my part and needing to be with them no longer.
A rather brilliant acquaintance once wrote - Love is the psychological manipulation of will. More specifically it is manipulating another's will so as to narrow the concept of choice. I thought of that a couple days ago and thought it sounded nice.
I thought of that a couple of days ago and thought it sounded true. I recall reading it when he first wrote it and going - Tsk, yeah right. Damit.
And yet, I expect. Once something is defined, vulnerability settles in. The relationship as it is now named becomes more like a position and the encounters, enactments of a job description. I am meant to be ______ therefore I ______ - or else... Relationships are, sadly, untenured positions. Even marriage, most sacred of contracts, does not protect from summary dismissal. Slowly, unconsciously, one becomes increasingly invested in staying true to the relationship as it is meant to be, to the expense of the partner as they actually wish to be treated.
Odd, I know. You'd think at some point partner A would talk to partner B. But then no, not always. The dynamic is such for a reason, and likely because it defines the relationship. It gives us what we all so need: validation and power, through the ability to see one previously independent being become dependent, attached, needy. It disgusts me, but that kind of power becomes addictive: how many people have you met set their lovers free because they are 'loved'/'valued' too much, out of concern for the existence of what was previously an individual?
The beauty of a person is what they offer by surprise, from the depths of their free will, desire, and goodness. Actions orchestrated or commissioned lose their essence and their meaning. Attached to a set of expectations or tailored to suit the other's desires, they can do nothing but fall short (although, temporarily, bringing satisfaction, their impact's shelf-life will seldom outlive the moments calling), for too often we see each action as a singular entity, rather than part of a constant expression of love, part of a chain of events or a narrative.
And if we do see that narrative as it is - the first instinct is to balance: does he/she exceed expectations, or fall short?
But... does he/she even know what is expected of her, has anyone ever let these expectations be voiced and agreed to? Do YOU even knwo what your expectations are, or are you just making it up as you go along?
Another brilliant person, whose voices has since echoed throughout those of the people I respect most said: You can't ever expect to be able to live with someone else until you can live with yourself. Until that time, they'll never live up, because neither you nor they knwo what they're living up to.
Knowledge of self is essential, a precondition to not loosing oneself within, and falling short during, a relationship. Without knowledge of strength, boundaries and shortcoings, too much energy will be wasted in 'Trying to be' - when a few more years of soul searching would have provided a quick, decisive 'No, I can't be that. Look elsewhere.' Although we as humans are only become human through other humans - through our relationships and daily acting outs of self - who is to say that one individual should have a greater hand in this becoming - mostly if we act for them as opposed to as them (assuming that the latter would find the partner be a source of inspiration, a marker pegging a desirable way of being).
What so many of us do is value the other, then the relationship, at our own expense. Being unable to accept 'failure' we try to succeed at the unachievable. It's Sandra Oh (Christina) choking in her wedding dress, having been dropped from unsightly heights: she was free. In the interest of being with him, I'll do anything: make myself less threatening, non-confrontational. Less things matter since he walked in, all the things I held on to, the periphery of my being, they matter less - if they ever really did, although they were the small thigsn that amde me me. He penetrated my shell, therefore I can shed it - not realising that bit by bit he'll get to my core. All the compromises are but mere acts, mere moments for a greater purpose, until we realise that we have been spending all our energy in attempts to soothe. Acting pre-emptively, re-balancing externally the internal will to be ourselves (What if he doesn't realy like who I am under this - he came in thinking I was all this, i can't break his mold of me by being ME, can I?). Playing a guilty game of one, between mind and actions. Until you realise you are uncertain, that nothing is instinctive and that everything has to be thought out. That you are convincing yourself and acting as though this was a promotionless job.
A relationship is a meeting of two people who, ideally, are good alone and potentially better together, as two individuals in a partnership. A relationship is NOT mutual validation and uplifting, and it is certainly not one's ability to vaidate and uplift the other, unilaterally. It should not find one acting for the other to their own detriment, because what they give up is that much less of themselves the partner will get to enjoy while they are slowly chewing away at the other, sooner or later leaving none. And moving on to the next.
