if true love is simply a love that is true, then isn't all love true love? for how can anything be love if it isn't true? and does its lack of truth make it false, or are there degrees of love? like "i love you, but not in that way". or "i love you, but i don't want to marry you. ever". or "i love you, but only if you are the person i thought i could mold you into, and not if you insist on being this stranger, this person who you really are, this person i was too blind to even notice throughout the last thousand days or so". or "i love you, but i'm pretty sure it's only temporary". or "i love you, but i have no idea what that even means".
does anyone?
of course, we never say these things. we may think them, but they are never spoken and released into the atmosphere as evidence of our truth. we invest years into people we are pretty sure are not in fact our true loves, yet there we remain - poised to be miserable with the hope that things might change, at some point. perfectly satisfied with a mediocre expression of what the limitless potential our souls have to love another. willing to accept an ordinary life for ourselves when we know full well that there is something fucking extraordinary out there, waiting.
waiting for us to get out of our own way.
our way is plagued with loneliness, yet it is also our biggest fear. and, if loneliness is all we've ever known, we fear its absence. more than anything, we fear the day our hearts will know true companionship because then what? we live in fear. i live in fear. most of the time, i am afraid of everything. a lot of the time, the awareness is overwhelming. and i start to wonder how people manage, like how to people manage to share themselves with another being? then i remember - they're living lies, same as me, only different lies. they live lies about other people - at least my lies are completely my own.
luckily, though, there is something that outweighs the loneliness. it is hope.
i hope there is such a thing as true love, or at least my idea of it. my idea of true love? a lasting love. it's loving with the knowledge that the love will never fade, because you've loved this soul before. your soul and this soul have passed through a thousand year's worth of days and are merely continuing what can never end, because true love has been predetermined.
true love is spending a quiet saturday morning in bed reading each other's favourite parts from your favourite books until oneday, the phone rings. thirty years have disappeared into the great abyss of happy existence and your oldest son is calling with news.
he's found his true love.
i believe this. and, though i sometimes allow myself to suffer and dwell in the loneliness i know that one day this day will become part of my truth.
for we all have the ability to make true love happen.
we just have to get out of our own way.
that being said - what the fuck do i know?
*shrug*
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oooh i so needed to read this :)
ReplyDeleteThere are a few points I feel worth disputing. It's mostly a matter of interpretation, but that can make all the difference in the world.
ReplyDeleteThe twin ideas that there is something extraordinary out there waiting for us, and that we need to get out of our own way to allow it in, skirts what I think is the most important element of HOW we can do this. It takes most of the agency out of our hands.
Love, in any lasting sense, is far from free and easy. It takes work and dedication beyond those flamboyantly happy moments. It takes a whole bunch of other junk anyone can list as well, of course, but most importantly it takes communication. Everything from body language to the little, comforting lies we tell will have its time and role. Clarity is crucial.
Many people are, as you've noted, living lies, but it's not those who have managed to honestly share themselves with another person who are doing this. Rather, it is the huge proportion of people that hide themselves behind their persona in order to fool their partner into loving them that are living the lie, and this is truly going to kick their ass (or at least leave their life emptier than it could be).
Aha, and supper calls!
dear nefariuspurpus -
ReplyDeletethanks for the response, i appreciate your comments. i tend to get this stuff out in the moment it's pertinent to my life and then, as i am continuously changing, label it as evidence of who i WAS in mind in spirit as it was being written and before. As soon as it is expressed, I am already beyond it. That's why I love to write - it's the best tool I have to transcend time and also my self.
as i said, i don't really know anything. i just spend a lot of time thinking and feeling and wondering and trying to make sense of it all.
there was one thing that you said that i agree with - about how it's not the people who are honestly sharing themselves with another person who are living the lies, but those who hide and trick and deny. i realized that a few days after i had written 'about true love', but as i mentioned what i wrote was more about expressing a place and even though i am somewhere different in this moment, THAT particular moment will never change, nor will the experiences that lead to its expression.
about love being far from free and easy - i have to disagree with you there. love, true love, is exactly this because true love cannot come into our lives until we have transcended our false self and embraced the self who is who we are meant to be, or knowingly following the path towards becoming this (it's a life long process - we will never, in this lifetime, fully open ourselves up to the secrets only our souls can reveal to us).
when we let go of our attachments that make love 'work' there is nothing for love to be BUT free and easy.
the work of love is merely our false selves fighting with our true selves and losing. the work has nothing to do trying to find a common ground between two hearts and minds and everything to do with our own internal battles between a false image of ourselves we have created and who we are meant to be - who we we want to be.
case and point -
i have issues with accepting/asking help from people, especially money and/or gifts from men. even something as simple and insignificant as a cup of coffee that someone may offer to buy my body immediately goes into a fight or flight response. i'm 10 years old again, standing in the sports aisle with my dad who is buying me hockey gloves. they're $75 and i know there is a bill that has gone unpaid because of me and all i can feel is guilt and nausea because over causing such a burden. so, when someone wants to buy me a drink or dinner i revert to this particular part of this false image i have created for myself as a result of this experience. it (the false image) tells me to insist i pay for it, or promise to return the favour, or not to accept it at all.
if i wasn't willing to accept this about myself, and involved in a relationship with someone, i would perpetuate this false image, choosing to make an issue of it every time the opportunity to do so presented itself. this fight, and use of energy it would require the two of us to move past it, would be identified as 'work' in the relationship. here was this obstacle, and this is what it took to move past it.
however, if i was operating with a better awareness of my true self and attempting to move farther and farther away from my false self, this occurrence would simply be a non-issue. i would acknowledge the feeling of guilt, realize its false source and allow it to pass. i would repeat this process until the initial feelings of guilt and, underlying that, unworthiness, would cease to even exist anymore.
imagine if both parties in every relationship were able to do this on a consistent basis. there would be no pettiness, no arguments, no 'work'. our lives could be spent journeying together toward a reality that better reflects who we are as human beings. the work would be in trying to communicate to the rest of the word how they are getting it wrong.
capitalism and the consumerist ideology have made the world view what is free and abundant as work for which there must be some kind of pay off in the end.
love is free, and love is easy. it is we who have made it into something it was never meant to be.
Heh, I'm glad we disagree on this. My own ideas are often made much sharper by the contrast of opinions.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it is odd to dialogue sensibly with people whose mental roots are so different from mine. For example, the idea that anything (love, life, happiness, etc) could possibly be meant to go one way or another supposes something like a god or destiny with a will intending great things for our future.
Like most aspects of life, I consider love (true or otherwise) to be a particularly fortuitous accident, put plainly. Now, there is in fact far more to my beliefs than the word accident could ever contain, but it is sufficient for here and now.
More on topic, it sounds to me like operating with a better awareness of one's true self is very much akin to the sort of work I was talking about. It is not easy to overcome the more unfortunate aspects of one's upbringing (as in your example); it in fact takes effort. If one can, then I think I agree that love is made by far the better, and stronger, for the individual who can achieve this for themself.
In general, the skeptic in me is extremely wary of idealistic scenarios, such as the one in which two parties are so honest with themself and each other that they can manage to be their true self freely and on a consistent basis. In part, this is fuelled by the fact that I've never actually witnessed two such personally successful people. But far more poignantly, my position is informed by another observation: nothing can remain static. People change, situations change, we age, we develop (long past some imaginary adult threshold), and so on. It is VERY difficult to shift with these changes, maintaining one's truest individual self (assuming one has realised this self to begin with) and simultaneously shifting with another body.
Put more plainly, I don't think this is an achievable state for most people (if indeed anyone).
And just to be fussy, I would like to clarify that the concept of "work" has pretty much only been given a negative connotation by the very same capitalist society mentioned above. Work doesn't (and shouldn't) have to be something undesirable. Most especially, working at something as wonderful as love should be a joy for anyone that honestly embraces the notion.
"True work," to coin a phrase, should be an enjoyable enterprise unto itself. Unfortunately, the term work has been corrupted to be synonymous with boring, tedious, painstaking, arduous. I think that's a touch tragic (though completely unsurprising, after the briefest of critical examinations of western society).
So, as an alternate position to your final line there, I contend: love is difficult, and love is work, and it is worth every moment and every effort. It is us who can make it the best it can be.
i've enjoyed experiencing your perspective. i think the underlying difference is that i believe in God, and you are more of a 'everything is random' type, which is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteGod bless variety, it is one of Her most extraordinary gifts...
I feel compelled to note, since it will probably come up in other discussions on here, that I most definitely do not believe that everything is random. Rather, I believe the world/universe runs on principles of tendency. It is a position I will be delighted to expand upon at some point.
ReplyDeletedelightful.
ReplyDelete