Yesterday, I finished one of the longer novels I've tackled in recent years: The Magus, by John Fowles. The length of a novel usually is not daunting to me, as evidenced by my favorite, Anna Karenina, which rings in at 864 pages in my preferred translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky. But I do receive long books with some skepticism: This better be worth the time. And if I'm being particularly prickly, I look for chapters or passages that the editor really should have struck.
I can't say what part of The Magus I would have deleted. Frankly, I'm still reeling from the experience of reading it. It's not like any other book I've read, and I'm still surprised that I hadn't heard of it before it was presented to me. (The back cover proclaims it as one of the Modern Library's 100 best novels of the 20th century.) The fantastic plot aside, I have trouble getting my head around the characters, especially the protagonist, Nicholas Urfe.
Urfe, a young 'everyman' (i.e. 'everyboy') coming of age in post-war UK and Greece, is one of the most challenging characters I have encountered in a novel. I recoiled at his internal monologues about sex/love/relationships, even to the point of having to put the book down at times. They were alarming, and the overall effect was that I felt naive about the motivations and machinations of the gentler sex (the other one).
Here's an example:
I didn’t collect conquests, but by the time I left Oxford I was a dozen girls away from virginity. I found my sexual success and the apparently ephemeral nature of love equally pleasing. It was like being good at golf, but despising the game. One was covered all round, both when one played and when one didn’t… I became almost as neat at ending liaisons as at starting them. This sounds, and was, calculating, but it was caused less by a true coldness than by my narcissistic belief in the importance of the lifestyle. I mistook the feeling of relief that dropping a girl always brought for a love of freedom. Perhaps the one thing in my favour was that I lied very little; I was always careful to make sure that the current victim knew, before she took her clothes off, the difference between coupling and marrying (21).
It's true that I've been sheltered from the rough and tumble culture of "hookups" and "sportfucks," per the 21st century parlance. I've missed the boat on this experience; in spite of having several semesters of child, adolescent, and adult psychology on my college transcript, I am naive. What Urfe's thought bubble brings home is that my inexperience shuts me out of understanding people who do participate, i.e. sportfuck. Yeah, I remember the unit on how Real Boys get socialized. I still don't get it -- the "lifestyle."
My confusion cuts deeper than not getting the lifestyle though -- I don't get him. And since Urfe's an everyboy, I guess I don't get boys. Even in the denouement, I couldn't understand why the essential lessons for Urfe (delivered, interestingly, by a well-to-do matron who quotes an old male sage) were so singularly focused on sex and the "truth":
Sex is perhaps a greater, but in no way a different, pleasure from any other. …It is only one part – and not the essential part – in the relationship we call love. …The essential part is truth, the trust two people build between their minds. Their souls. What you will. That the real infidelity is the one that hides the sexual infidelity. Because the one thing that must never come between two people who have offered each other love is a lie (602-603).
Now I don't feel naive; or not merely naive. I feel a touch of superiority, to both the speaker and to Urfe (as well as those he may represent). To Urfe, my somewhat incredulous rhetorical question would go something like: Isn't it self-evident that love requires fidelity -- sexual and otherwise? (Maybe I'd a throw in a Duh? as a touch of 21st century vernacular.)
My rebuttal to the woman who delivers this central lesson in The Magus is more serious and nuanced: The fullness of requited love doesn't manifest itself as a persistent exercise in truth-telling. Nor is it necessarily destroyed by sex with someone else. For as it is written in perhaps the longest book I will ever endeavor to receive: "Love keeps no record of wrongs" (1 Corinthians 13:5). Certainly love "rejoices with the truth," but this does not require that love be condemned by a lie (13:5).
If not through the relentless pursuit of truth and sexual fidelity, then how does one rightly express love?
The essential actions of love are a kind of fidelity, but not ones so simplistic as telling truths or having sex with one person. These treat the end goal of our love actions as a fidelity to a code of ethics, our ability to adhere to such. Surely love is greater than the sum of our best behaviors, and surely the object of our love is not merely our own betterment -- "love is not self-seeking" (13:5).
Author Min Jin Lee writes: "We are all marked for something finer, and it is for us to take it on" (November 2007, Vogue, 250).
I believe that love "protects" the objects of our deepest affections, both from outsiders as well as from our own imperfections -- lies and otherwise (13:7). I believe that love requires a fundamental "trust" -- not the kind of trust that prescribes rules, then awaits the transgression, but the kind that believes in the ones we love, both because of what they do, yet also in spite of what they do (13:7). I believe that love inspires an active "hope" that leads us through the inevitable tests of time (13:7). And above all, I believe that love proves its power through "perseverance" (13:7).
Two people who take on the acts of protecting, trusting, hoping, and persevering in their caring towards each other are rightly called "in love." To close on a 21st century note: Everything else is crap.
Interesting synopsis of a recent biography of John Fowles here.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Heartache
The book I coedited surpassed 5,000 copies in total sales this quarter. The royalty check, which arrived in the mail today, announced this fact, along with 200-odd dollars for my take of my coeditor's and my trouble. The check prompted me to appreciate once again that we didn't do this book for the money. But it is fulfilling to know that there are 5,269(!) copies of our book in circulation in libraries, classrooms, and homes across the U.S.
This post was supposed to be about celebrating this occasion, and reflecting on the events that led to the creation of the book. It was over seven years ago that my coeditor and I conceived of this book, and nearly four years since its release. Much has changed since then, including our respective views about being Asian American. But that is not for today. Today, I am overcome by another feeling that is quite the opposite of celebratory. It's a sense of sadness and loss -- heartache.
--
When I started business school, I was 26 and fresh out of the experience of dating a much older man. It was short-lived, but the most educational dating relationship I have had. I learned that I had the power of youth: the ability to walk away from someone or something because one has the luxury of time and spirit to anticipate a better option. I learned that love didn't quite "conquer all," and that I needed someone who would be an equal partner in my life, rather than someone whose life mine would be subordinate to. While it certainly wasn't expected of me, I realized during this time that I couldn't walk into this man's life to be his wife, and mother to his children from a previous marriage. It wasn't impossible, but that life wouldn't be my life.
This wasn't the first time that I had walked away from a relationship that I stopped believing in. But it was the most impactful in that it coincided with a new understanding I had about myself: I had expectations and boundaries for my relationships. Being attached, being enamored of, and even being in love weren't enough, as I had once believed. If I wanted someone I could be with for all time, I couldn't stop short. I had to find that someone who could become, over time, the love of my life: someone with whom I had chemistry and compatibility, but also whose life circumstances coincided with mine.
I entered school carrying this sense of purpose. I didn't expect to find my someone at school; I understood love and marriage to be a life mission that surpassed both the realm of business study as well as the two short years I would be here. But when I arrived, I encountered the frenetic networking activity characteristic of business schools, with a culture that privileged ephemeral connections and social coverage. And I didn't want to simply belong. I wanted to be me, and I didn't like the me I saw in this setting. I didn't much care how many friends I ended up with, or who knew I existed. So it was easy for me to withdraw and draw near to those who would become my good friends. I would not date during this first year, I resolved. I would be 'open for business' again in the close of the year, I joked to close friends.
Some boundaries and expectations beget deeper freedoms. For me, defining my first year socially turned out to be surprisingly rewarding. I threw dinner parties, invited women friends over to watch Cashmere Mafia, and reveled in the company of likeminded women (and some men) I could laugh with. It was good, safe fun without lingering 'what ifs' -- at least on my end. During this time of being 'off the market,' I felt so free to explore friendships in what I will call a "wholesome" way. I listened to people's stories. I wanted to understand them and find our common ground. And more often than not, we did.
As the end of the year approached, I realized that my time of exploring was drawing to a close. New boundaries, and new expectations would replace the old. But this time, I didn't know what they would look like. And with this uncertainty came risk.
I didn't have much time to contemplate the risk. As if on cue, someone caught my eye and I, his. It was like a summer camp crush; it ended when we both returned to reality and realized that the context no longer supported our interest. It was a primer in understanding that people change with changing contexts. That what appears rosy in a foreign land shrivels and wilts at home. I had taken a risk and been disappointed. I implicitly understood that there would likely be many more along the way.
No sooner had I begun to espouse this outlook when someone else appeared. I vowed to not grow close to him. It was the end of the school year and he would leave for a new context. Moreover, he had dated a woman I considered a close friend. The air was not clear. It was hardly an auspicious set of circumstances for a healthy relationship of any sort.
But over the short time, and in spite of myself, I felt my boundaries shifting. My expectations (for nothing) relaxed. I began to appreciate this person's warmth of character and large-spiritedness. I enjoyed conversing with him, and I always lost track of time. Perhaps in the truest test of a meaningful friendship, I liked myself when I was with him. He was effortlessly fascinating. I felt fulfilled and happy.
Everything always ends, but short times enjoyed end so much more quickly. I wasn't ready to say goodbye; I hadn't been ready to say hello. But the day came, and goodbyes were exchanged. It was an inevitability, I consoled myself. It would have happened someday.
I am struck: When did this fatalist replace the youthful lover I discovered in myself just a year hence? I have always loved freely, as my cup runneth over. Whatever I lost I would regain. Now, in place of carefree possibility, I find a foreign sense of self-protection. A fear of being hurt. An unwillingness to put my heart on the line, even as I recognize that it -- this -- he -- above all could be 'worth it' as none before.
And so a dull ache in the center of my heart. I mourn the departure of someone who meant more to me than I know how to show. How the boundaries have moved! And as feelings glow inside of me (in spite of me), like warm embers in an abandoned campfire, what a struggle it is to suppress my wish to see him again. Lest it spawn foolish expectations that circumstance will not permit. Lest they become disappointments that I cannot withstand. Lest this longing stay and heartache persist as never before.
This post was supposed to be about celebrating this occasion, and reflecting on the events that led to the creation of the book. It was over seven years ago that my coeditor and I conceived of this book, and nearly four years since its release. Much has changed since then, including our respective views about being Asian American. But that is not for today. Today, I am overcome by another feeling that is quite the opposite of celebratory. It's a sense of sadness and loss -- heartache.
--
When I started business school, I was 26 and fresh out of the experience of dating a much older man. It was short-lived, but the most educational dating relationship I have had. I learned that I had the power of youth: the ability to walk away from someone or something because one has the luxury of time and spirit to anticipate a better option. I learned that love didn't quite "conquer all," and that I needed someone who would be an equal partner in my life, rather than someone whose life mine would be subordinate to. While it certainly wasn't expected of me, I realized during this time that I couldn't walk into this man's life to be his wife, and mother to his children from a previous marriage. It wasn't impossible, but that life wouldn't be my life.
This wasn't the first time that I had walked away from a relationship that I stopped believing in. But it was the most impactful in that it coincided with a new understanding I had about myself: I had expectations and boundaries for my relationships. Being attached, being enamored of, and even being in love weren't enough, as I had once believed. If I wanted someone I could be with for all time, I couldn't stop short. I had to find that someone who could become, over time, the love of my life: someone with whom I had chemistry and compatibility, but also whose life circumstances coincided with mine.
I entered school carrying this sense of purpose. I didn't expect to find my someone at school; I understood love and marriage to be a life mission that surpassed both the realm of business study as well as the two short years I would be here. But when I arrived, I encountered the frenetic networking activity characteristic of business schools, with a culture that privileged ephemeral connections and social coverage. And I didn't want to simply belong. I wanted to be me, and I didn't like the me I saw in this setting. I didn't much care how many friends I ended up with, or who knew I existed. So it was easy for me to withdraw and draw near to those who would become my good friends. I would not date during this first year, I resolved. I would be 'open for business' again in the close of the year, I joked to close friends.
Some boundaries and expectations beget deeper freedoms. For me, defining my first year socially turned out to be surprisingly rewarding. I threw dinner parties, invited women friends over to watch Cashmere Mafia, and reveled in the company of likeminded women (and some men) I could laugh with. It was good, safe fun without lingering 'what ifs' -- at least on my end. During this time of being 'off the market,' I felt so free to explore friendships in what I will call a "wholesome" way. I listened to people's stories. I wanted to understand them and find our common ground. And more often than not, we did.
As the end of the year approached, I realized that my time of exploring was drawing to a close. New boundaries, and new expectations would replace the old. But this time, I didn't know what they would look like. And with this uncertainty came risk.
I didn't have much time to contemplate the risk. As if on cue, someone caught my eye and I, his. It was like a summer camp crush; it ended when we both returned to reality and realized that the context no longer supported our interest. It was a primer in understanding that people change with changing contexts. That what appears rosy in a foreign land shrivels and wilts at home. I had taken a risk and been disappointed. I implicitly understood that there would likely be many more along the way.
No sooner had I begun to espouse this outlook when someone else appeared. I vowed to not grow close to him. It was the end of the school year and he would leave for a new context. Moreover, he had dated a woman I considered a close friend. The air was not clear. It was hardly an auspicious set of circumstances for a healthy relationship of any sort.
But over the short time, and in spite of myself, I felt my boundaries shifting. My expectations (for nothing) relaxed. I began to appreciate this person's warmth of character and large-spiritedness. I enjoyed conversing with him, and I always lost track of time. Perhaps in the truest test of a meaningful friendship, I liked myself when I was with him. He was effortlessly fascinating. I felt fulfilled and happy.
Everything always ends, but short times enjoyed end so much more quickly. I wasn't ready to say goodbye; I hadn't been ready to say hello. But the day came, and goodbyes were exchanged. It was an inevitability, I consoled myself. It would have happened someday.
I am struck: When did this fatalist replace the youthful lover I discovered in myself just a year hence? I have always loved freely, as my cup runneth over. Whatever I lost I would regain. Now, in place of carefree possibility, I find a foreign sense of self-protection. A fear of being hurt. An unwillingness to put my heart on the line, even as I recognize that it -- this -- he -- above all could be 'worth it' as none before.
And so a dull ache in the center of my heart. I mourn the departure of someone who meant more to me than I know how to show. How the boundaries have moved! And as feelings glow inside of me (in spite of me), like warm embers in an abandoned campfire, what a struggle it is to suppress my wish to see him again. Lest it spawn foolish expectations that circumstance will not permit. Lest they become disappointments that I cannot withstand. Lest this longing stay and heartache persist as never before.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Liberty and License
I like etymology. I think of the growth and evolution of words as a lens to the growth and evolution of human thought. In particular, I like considering the histories and mysteries of words that have evolved to carry opposing meanings.
"Liberty" and "license" are two such words. The most common meaning of liberty is the kind that the Founding Fathers invoked when they cried, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Freedom. Freedom to have a life of one's choosing, free of encumbrances and fears. When we think "license," it usually has to do with being allowed to do something we otherwise cannot, such as operate a motor vehicle or sell liquor at a restaurant. It, too, is a freedom -- one that frees one of the encumbering laws that be.
Turning over liberty and license yields the limits to the freedom they stand for. Taking liberties implies quite a different aspect of freedom -- the freedoms that one takes at one's own risk. Licentiousness is using freedom irresponsibly, a disregard for rules explicit or implied, or perhaps disrespect for the way things are.
The obvious conclusion is that people over time have come to acknowledge, if not accept, that there are limits to our freedom. What is less obvious is when and how to act according to this maxim, especially when the freedom is my happiness and the limit is someone else's.
I view this as the central conflict in one of my favorite movies: Closer. Alice, Anna, Dan, and Larry choose to conduct their freedoms in their various ways, chasing their happinesses at the cost of others'. They take liberties they are not proud of, and engage in license that destroys trust. My read of Closer implies that there was a higher road that the four did not take. I think there was. But I also wonder if they could have really taken it.
There's usually a textbook "best case scenario" for every dramatic conflict. Dan should not have made a move on Anna when he had Alice and knew he couldn't leave her. Anna should not have violated her marriage vows with Larry. Both should have exercised more discipline. Alice should not have pursued Dan knowing that Ruth was still cutting the crusts off his tuna sandwiches. Larry should not have screwed both Anna and Alice to "fuck up" Dan. There's a running theme of discipline -- or lack thereof -- throughout the film. But there's also the issue of kindness. It would have been more "disciplined," but also more kind for all four to forebear from the happiness they thought they were pursuing, or the hurt that they eventually caused.
The discipline and kindness that result in happiness and hurt. They in turn are rooted in desire. Desire -- which flourishes without regard for proprieties or consideration. Desire that is unconcerned with kindness and certainly doesn't care for discipline. But desire isn't the problem. All of our actions are predicated on some sort of desire. As Aristotle famously put it, "Desire is the root of all human activity." Without desire, how act? Why live?
So ultimately I cannot judge the odious results of Alice, Anna, Dan, and Larry's collective undiscipline and unkindness. The liberties they took against one another, and the license they committed towards one another: They are, alas, the unfortunate expressions of real desire. They collided in a time and space not of their own choosing.
And yet I cannot help but hope for a better end than the tragedy that too often results when we pursue desires that run counter to those of others. Perhaps that is why, over time, I believe we must learn to choose the ones we protect and care for above all. To commit to the objects of our desire and to be for them what we cannot be for everyone else. To bear the costs of loving those to whom we are true.
Perhaps that is the etymology of love.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-- from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"
"Liberty" and "license" are two such words. The most common meaning of liberty is the kind that the Founding Fathers invoked when they cried, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Freedom. Freedom to have a life of one's choosing, free of encumbrances and fears. When we think "license," it usually has to do with being allowed to do something we otherwise cannot, such as operate a motor vehicle or sell liquor at a restaurant. It, too, is a freedom -- one that frees one of the encumbering laws that be.
Turning over liberty and license yields the limits to the freedom they stand for. Taking liberties implies quite a different aspect of freedom -- the freedoms that one takes at one's own risk. Licentiousness is using freedom irresponsibly, a disregard for rules explicit or implied, or perhaps disrespect for the way things are.
The obvious conclusion is that people over time have come to acknowledge, if not accept, that there are limits to our freedom. What is less obvious is when and how to act according to this maxim, especially when the freedom is my happiness and the limit is someone else's.
I view this as the central conflict in one of my favorite movies: Closer. Alice, Anna, Dan, and Larry choose to conduct their freedoms in their various ways, chasing their happinesses at the cost of others'. They take liberties they are not proud of, and engage in license that destroys trust. My read of Closer implies that there was a higher road that the four did not take. I think there was. But I also wonder if they could have really taken it.
There's usually a textbook "best case scenario" for every dramatic conflict. Dan should not have made a move on Anna when he had Alice and knew he couldn't leave her. Anna should not have violated her marriage vows with Larry. Both should have exercised more discipline. Alice should not have pursued Dan knowing that Ruth was still cutting the crusts off his tuna sandwiches. Larry should not have screwed both Anna and Alice to "fuck up" Dan. There's a running theme of discipline -- or lack thereof -- throughout the film. But there's also the issue of kindness. It would have been more "disciplined," but also more kind for all four to forebear from the happiness they thought they were pursuing, or the hurt that they eventually caused.
The discipline and kindness that result in happiness and hurt. They in turn are rooted in desire. Desire -- which flourishes without regard for proprieties or consideration. Desire that is unconcerned with kindness and certainly doesn't care for discipline. But desire isn't the problem. All of our actions are predicated on some sort of desire. As Aristotle famously put it, "Desire is the root of all human activity." Without desire, how act? Why live?
So ultimately I cannot judge the odious results of Alice, Anna, Dan, and Larry's collective undiscipline and unkindness. The liberties they took against one another, and the license they committed towards one another: They are, alas, the unfortunate expressions of real desire. They collided in a time and space not of their own choosing.
And yet I cannot help but hope for a better end than the tragedy that too often results when we pursue desires that run counter to those of others. Perhaps that is why, over time, I believe we must learn to choose the ones we protect and care for above all. To commit to the objects of our desire and to be for them what we cannot be for everyone else. To bear the costs of loving those to whom we are true.
Perhaps that is the etymology of love.
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
-- from Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach"
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Meaning
I've been trying to write a post about the heart and reason for the past week. I have not been able to finish it, and not for lack of time. I have all the pieces I want to use: favorite quotes from The Little Prince and Blaise Pascal's musings. Even a little complaint about the Western metaphor of sight for understanding. But I don't know how to conclude it. I don't know how it ends.
Where does it end.
I used to ask this question of myself in every endeavor, every facet of my life. After all, everything always ends. It's responsible to plan ahead and orchestrate the endings we want. And yet even as I endorse the age old wisdom here now, I wonder.
We are accustomed to relying on our gifts of heart and mind to triangulate our decisions and tread the paths we intend. We nod and hmm that the heart has reasons that reason itself cannot know. We observe that the essential is invisible to the eye... and yet:
We had the experience but missed the meaning. -- T.S. Eliot
For, descriptions of what the heart can and cannot do aren't the point. It's not about observations or juxtapositions, however beautifully and artfully rendered. And today, as I sit in the cool silence of my new living room, replete with the entrapments of modern technology and all things clean and new, the ending comes to me.
The meaning we seek is not an insight into either reason or passion, nor is it the strivings of either heart or mind. The meaning is love:
John Nash
We live by the intent of our reasons and passions, by the marching orders of our minds or the beating of our hearts. But the end. The end we seek is love.
Where does it end.
I used to ask this question of myself in every endeavor, every facet of my life. After all, everything always ends. It's responsible to plan ahead and orchestrate the endings we want. And yet even as I endorse the age old wisdom here now, I wonder.
We are accustomed to relying on our gifts of heart and mind to triangulate our decisions and tread the paths we intend. We nod and hmm that the heart has reasons that reason itself cannot know. We observe that the essential is invisible to the eye... and yet:
We had the experience but missed the meaning. -- T.S. Eliot
For, descriptions of what the heart can and cannot do aren't the point. It's not about observations or juxtapositions, however beautifully and artfully rendered. And today, as I sit in the cool silence of my new living room, replete with the entrapments of modern technology and all things clean and new, the ending comes to me.
The meaning we seek is not an insight into either reason or passion, nor is it the strivings of either heart or mind. The meaning is love:
John Nash
We live by the intent of our reasons and passions, by the marching orders of our minds or the beating of our hearts. But the end. The end we seek is love.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Love letter
I was sick today. So I made some Turkish coffee, got a box of Kleenex, turned on some soothing pop, and caught up on my correspondence. As I sifted through the letters I've been neglecting to respond to, I found one that I had written but hadn't sent. I am not in the habit of not sending letters I write, but this one I hadn't. It was a love letter.
3 March 2007
I once read that "time betrays" all. And the first time I felt I could understand what the writer meant was when I looked in my bathroom mirror at age 21 and realized I didn't feel a day older than 16. (Or even 12.) I looked different. Older, yes. Wiser, maybe. But I felt exactly like myself -- timeless (I'd like to believe) and whole. I remember mentioning this to my old high school guidance counselor over cheap sushi on a recent visit home. She lit up with recognition when I reflected on how, even at age 25, I didn't feel a day older than 15. I am still me. I have always been, and even at retirement, I imagine I'll feel much like my old self. Oh, betrayal!
I think of this age issue more often these days than I used to. Yes, of course on account of you. I am still a bit in disbelief that you will be forty (looks better in print than in numerals) soon. I'm not referring to your good genes so much as I am thinking about how I 'experience' you overall. You don't 'look' your age, but you don't 'feel' it either. Apparently time has been faithful to you after all.
To be more clear, you sort of feel like a friend more than someone I am dating. My friends tend to be of many numeric ages, but they all feel "my age" in terms of how we connect with one another. I like that about my good friends, whom I intend on keeping for life.
I would like to say I sense and like this potential in you too. I've really enjoyed the time we've spent connecting in our own ways. I've been surprised at the time and also at my enjoyment of it. You make me think and I appreciate that. It's fun. It's also a little worrisome.
I've learned -- through many failures and much seeking -- to recognize someone likeable when I find one. I don't mean pleasant or friendly in the general sense, but someone I genuinely like and appreciate, both for who they are and the person I am in their company. You are someone like this. Your restless energy, your hunger for knowledge, and the surprising sense of warmth that holds it all together are so compelling to me. It's easy to feel "in my element" when I am with you and I think that is rare -- special. It's when I recognized this that I heeded -- and kissed you. ("Maybe I like you too.") It's also when I became vulnerable to you. And therein lies the worry.
Part -- most -- of my sense of confidence comes from a clear understanding of what I stand on. I rely not on my gifts or talents to drive my sense of self, but on relationships of trust. My family is a tremendous source of strength for me. Yes, as you've pointed out, I am an "A player," but that doesn't make me feel any better about myself. The certainty that I can turn to my family no matter what, and the confidence that they will always tell me the truth in my best interest -- these are what ground me and make me the strong, confident young woman that most people know. And these are the sorts of things I seek in my extended family of friends. Trust. Honesty. Good conversation. (And good food and wine.) Aristotle would be proud. These allow me to let down my well-developed (over-developed?) guard and be myself. My good friends marvel at the relationships we have shared over time. I have not "betrayed" them, to put it thus. And they have been good and true. We are vulnerable to one another, and safely so... Love.
We share a commitment called love.
I said to you once that we haven't had that long, elaborate, getting-to-know-you dance that I am accustomed to having with someone before I start to date them. That's not exactly right. We've known each other for a while now. And clearly we've formed opinions. What I meant is that I wasn't sure whether you'd turn out to be someone, like my good friends, whom I could trust to tell me the truth even if I do not ask, and even if, when I do ask, I don't word the question precisely. Are you someone I can be vulnerable and free with. The question has a pointedness that time alone cannot address.
What can answer the question, I've learned, is to begin the dance. To leave my dance card open for those I like, and to carefully learn to take their hand and learn their movements. The pace, the strides, and eventually the slight signals that tell me to relax and spin, or allow myself to be pulled close. It is a dance that has brought me close to those I love and pushed me away from those I cannot love.
And so I leave my dance card on the table, hoping that you will write your name in it again. And then perhaps again. Let me learn your movements and grow to recognize your signals, as you do mine. And one of these days, if time does not betray, and we remain true, perhaps I will find that I love you too.
3 March 2007
I once read that "time betrays" all. And the first time I felt I could understand what the writer meant was when I looked in my bathroom mirror at age 21 and realized I didn't feel a day older than 16. (Or even 12.) I looked different. Older, yes. Wiser, maybe. But I felt exactly like myself -- timeless (I'd like to believe) and whole. I remember mentioning this to my old high school guidance counselor over cheap sushi on a recent visit home. She lit up with recognition when I reflected on how, even at age 25, I didn't feel a day older than 15. I am still me. I have always been, and even at retirement, I imagine I'll feel much like my old self. Oh, betrayal!
I think of this age issue more often these days than I used to. Yes, of course on account of you. I am still a bit in disbelief that you will be forty (looks better in print than in numerals) soon. I'm not referring to your good genes so much as I am thinking about how I 'experience' you overall. You don't 'look' your age, but you don't 'feel' it either. Apparently time has been faithful to you after all.
To be more clear, you sort of feel like a friend more than someone I am dating. My friends tend to be of many numeric ages, but they all feel "my age" in terms of how we connect with one another. I like that about my good friends, whom I intend on keeping for life.
I would like to say I sense and like this potential in you too. I've really enjoyed the time we've spent connecting in our own ways. I've been surprised at the time and also at my enjoyment of it. You make me think and I appreciate that. It's fun. It's also a little worrisome.
I've learned -- through many failures and much seeking -- to recognize someone likeable when I find one. I don't mean pleasant or friendly in the general sense, but someone I genuinely like and appreciate, both for who they are and the person I am in their company. You are someone like this. Your restless energy, your hunger for knowledge, and the surprising sense of warmth that holds it all together are so compelling to me. It's easy to feel "in my element" when I am with you and I think that is rare -- special. It's when I recognized this that I heeded -- and kissed you. ("Maybe I like you too.") It's also when I became vulnerable to you. And therein lies the worry.
Part -- most -- of my sense of confidence comes from a clear understanding of what I stand on. I rely not on my gifts or talents to drive my sense of self, but on relationships of trust. My family is a tremendous source of strength for me. Yes, as you've pointed out, I am an "A player," but that doesn't make me feel any better about myself. The certainty that I can turn to my family no matter what, and the confidence that they will always tell me the truth in my best interest -- these are what ground me and make me the strong, confident young woman that most people know. And these are the sorts of things I seek in my extended family of friends. Trust. Honesty. Good conversation. (And good food and wine.) Aristotle would be proud. These allow me to let down my well-developed (over-developed?) guard and be myself. My good friends marvel at the relationships we have shared over time. I have not "betrayed" them, to put it thus. And they have been good and true. We are vulnerable to one another, and safely so... Love.
We share a commitment called love.
I said to you once that we haven't had that long, elaborate, getting-to-know-you dance that I am accustomed to having with someone before I start to date them. That's not exactly right. We've known each other for a while now. And clearly we've formed opinions. What I meant is that I wasn't sure whether you'd turn out to be someone, like my good friends, whom I could trust to tell me the truth even if I do not ask, and even if, when I do ask, I don't word the question precisely. Are you someone I can be vulnerable and free with. The question has a pointedness that time alone cannot address.
What can answer the question, I've learned, is to begin the dance. To leave my dance card open for those I like, and to carefully learn to take their hand and learn their movements. The pace, the strides, and eventually the slight signals that tell me to relax and spin, or allow myself to be pulled close. It is a dance that has brought me close to those I love and pushed me away from those I cannot love.
And so I leave my dance card on the table, hoping that you will write your name in it again. And then perhaps again. Let me learn your movements and grow to recognize your signals, as you do mine. And one of these days, if time does not betray, and we remain true, perhaps I will find that I love you too.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Endings
It's closing time here at the business school (Semisonic song here). One class of graduates prepares to go forth into the world, to the places where they will be from. Some people seem more happy about this than others do. The business school can be an exhausting place, small enough for most people to have at least heard of most other people (and know the gory details of their past and present). It's also a place that can inspire (or alternately intimidate) those who find their way through the program, surrounded by more ambition and talent than perhaps anywhere else they will ever be. And at the close of two nine-month stints, it's a place we all leave, to take our dreams and begin anew elsewhere.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
I'm transfixed by this line from "Closing time." It reminds me of a discussion I once had with my classmates in Professor Tom Hibbs's Modern Philosophy class about the meaning of "the present" -- specifically whether the present is anything more than a gateway between the past and future: I remember arguing (loosely) T.S. Eliot's conception of all time as eternally present. That events happen in time, but our memory makes the past present, and our dreams make the future present. That we are not simply travelers on the highway of the time-space continuum. Beginnings and endings both are held within us as we travel through our lives in time. We are the arbiters of their meanings. We are the keepers of our present. Put another way, beginnings and endings come and go in time, but in us, they remain eternally present.
I have thought about time and the present as singular concepts since my first year in college, where I grew to love the field of Philosophy, particularly theological and practical philosophy. I embraced it in part because of a thought I had had during my gap year, when I attended my first funeral. A Sunday school classmate had died in a freak car accident, and I encountered the horror of a peer's (or anyone's) death for the first time. She was beautiful and conflicted, and I remember admiring her poise from afar... yet also thinking that she was a bit stuck up and wasn't particularly nice. As I sat in the pews of the funeral home, it struck me deeply that that image would be the one I would have of her forever. We would have no future interactions that would alter my view. And as I began to think seriously about how I wanted to be remembered, I embraced the study of Philosophy as an opportunity to figure out how to 'do' the rest of my life.
I wasn't concerned with what accomplishments I would achieve in time, nor what accolades or talents I'd acquire. What I wanted was to position myself...in myself. I wanted to be who I wanted to be for the rest of my life, and for that to happen, I had to know who it was I wanted to be. I knew I couldn't be everything to everyone. I also knew I would be something to everyone; everyone would remember me as something. So I decided first that I wanted to be someone who lived by her own principles -- someone who lived her life according to her own values and continually grew in that regard. One value I espoused was loyalty to family and friends. I wouldn't violate the trust or confidence of those I loved or liked. Through beginnings and ending of relationships, in the various places where I lived, and over time, I would be sensitive to others' feelings and faithful to their emotional health. That quality would be part of my present.
It's closing time. And as I commiserate with friends who are preparing to depart, I find that now is a time not only to affirm our time shared, but really more to renew the present. Have we been present to one another in the ways we have intended to be, regardless of context and circumstance? Have we been true to ourselves and to others? In the end of our shared time, have we begun to hear (half-hear) who one another are?
Eliot says it much better:
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable. ... Time past and time future, what might have been and what has been, point to one end, which is always present. ... What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
...
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate when the last of earth left to discover is that which was the beginning, at the source of the longest river, the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple-tree, not known, because not looked for. But heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea.
See poem in its entirety here: The Four Quartets.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.
I'm transfixed by this line from "Closing time." It reminds me of a discussion I once had with my classmates in Professor Tom Hibbs's Modern Philosophy class about the meaning of "the present" -- specifically whether the present is anything more than a gateway between the past and future: I remember arguing (loosely) T.S. Eliot's conception of all time as eternally present. That events happen in time, but our memory makes the past present, and our dreams make the future present. That we are not simply travelers on the highway of the time-space continuum. Beginnings and endings both are held within us as we travel through our lives in time. We are the arbiters of their meanings. We are the keepers of our present. Put another way, beginnings and endings come and go in time, but in us, they remain eternally present.
I have thought about time and the present as singular concepts since my first year in college, where I grew to love the field of Philosophy, particularly theological and practical philosophy. I embraced it in part because of a thought I had had during my gap year, when I attended my first funeral. A Sunday school classmate had died in a freak car accident, and I encountered the horror of a peer's (or anyone's) death for the first time. She was beautiful and conflicted, and I remember admiring her poise from afar... yet also thinking that she was a bit stuck up and wasn't particularly nice. As I sat in the pews of the funeral home, it struck me deeply that that image would be the one I would have of her forever. We would have no future interactions that would alter my view. And as I began to think seriously about how I wanted to be remembered, I embraced the study of Philosophy as an opportunity to figure out how to 'do' the rest of my life.
I wasn't concerned with what accomplishments I would achieve in time, nor what accolades or talents I'd acquire. What I wanted was to position myself...in myself. I wanted to be who I wanted to be for the rest of my life, and for that to happen, I had to know who it was I wanted to be. I knew I couldn't be everything to everyone. I also knew I would be something to everyone; everyone would remember me as something. So I decided first that I wanted to be someone who lived by her own principles -- someone who lived her life according to her own values and continually grew in that regard. One value I espoused was loyalty to family and friends. I wouldn't violate the trust or confidence of those I loved or liked. Through beginnings and ending of relationships, in the various places where I lived, and over time, I would be sensitive to others' feelings and faithful to their emotional health. That quality would be part of my present.
It's closing time. And as I commiserate with friends who are preparing to depart, I find that now is a time not only to affirm our time shared, but really more to renew the present. Have we been present to one another in the ways we have intended to be, regardless of context and circumstance? Have we been true to ourselves and to others? In the end of our shared time, have we begun to hear (half-hear) who one another are?
Eliot says it much better:
Time present and time past are both perhaps present in time future, and time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present, all time is unredeemable. ... Time past and time future, what might have been and what has been, point to one end, which is always present. ... What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.
...
We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. Through the unknown, unremembered gate when the last of earth left to discover is that which was the beginning, at the source of the longest river, the voice of the hidden waterfall and the children in the apple-tree, not known, because not looked for. But heard, half-heard, in the stillness between two waves of the sea.
See poem in its entirety here: The Four Quartets.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Touchy Feely
There's a class here that is affectionately nicknamed "Touchy Feely" -- Interpersonal Dynamics. It was started by a friend of a professor I admire at my alma mater, whose equivalent class I took in my last year as an undergrad -- Action Research Methods. I credit that class for allowing me to become more open about my feelings (just as I credit another professor's class -- Insight -- for allowing me to conceptualize feelings as legitimate and rational).
I remember how taking the class felt at once like both entrapment and liberation. On one hand, I was mentally pinned down by smart people who wouldn't let me rationalize away my feelings or pretend my feelings were logical thoughts. On the other hand, I was shown how to talk about feelings and learn to 'own' them, with confidence. It was a marvelous class, and in the years since then I have referred back to it again and again.
Feelings are so incredibly complex and maddeningly difficult to pin down. We may not want to be discovered, even by ourselves, and some feelings may be unfamiliar and tough to navigate. Especially the feeling of interest towards another.
I don't differentiate much between platonic or erotic interest because I think the early feeling is just about the same. For whatever precise reason, I feel my interest piqued when I spot people I want to get to know better, boy or girl, love interest or friend interest. And so I apprehend that moment, and signal that interest: either indirectly by lingering and chatting or some other way of spending time, or directly, by expressing the feeling itself. It is safer for me to be indirect, because it saves me the embarrassment or horror of knowing that that feeling is not returned, or is returned in the negative. But in the right moments, it is far more powerful for me to be direct, rather than sprinkling hints and innuendos that may or may not be pieced together into the simple truth of my feeling.
In the right moments. Now there's a key turn of phrase. I've spent all these years discovering how I feel about people and getting better at identifying those feelings real-time. But the question remains: What are the right moments in which to...well, to reveal myself? I don't have a good answer to this, though I suspect it has to do with timing and instincts. And with that I reach the limits of being in touch with my feelings: I can know how I feel, and be adept at identifying my feelings, but how and when to show it requires a different kind of awareness. I have to be able to read in other people their openness and readiness to receive my interest. And with a little breath and a touch of fear, to offer it.
Ai yai yai. I wonder if they teach this in Advanced Touchy Feely.
I remember how taking the class felt at once like both entrapment and liberation. On one hand, I was mentally pinned down by smart people who wouldn't let me rationalize away my feelings or pretend my feelings were logical thoughts. On the other hand, I was shown how to talk about feelings and learn to 'own' them, with confidence. It was a marvelous class, and in the years since then I have referred back to it again and again.
Feelings are so incredibly complex and maddeningly difficult to pin down. We may not want to be discovered, even by ourselves, and some feelings may be unfamiliar and tough to navigate. Especially the feeling of interest towards another.
I don't differentiate much between platonic or erotic interest because I think the early feeling is just about the same. For whatever precise reason, I feel my interest piqued when I spot people I want to get to know better, boy or girl, love interest or friend interest. And so I apprehend that moment, and signal that interest: either indirectly by lingering and chatting or some other way of spending time, or directly, by expressing the feeling itself. It is safer for me to be indirect, because it saves me the embarrassment or horror of knowing that that feeling is not returned, or is returned in the negative. But in the right moments, it is far more powerful for me to be direct, rather than sprinkling hints and innuendos that may or may not be pieced together into the simple truth of my feeling.
In the right moments. Now there's a key turn of phrase. I've spent all these years discovering how I feel about people and getting better at identifying those feelings real-time. But the question remains: What are the right moments in which to...well, to reveal myself? I don't have a good answer to this, though I suspect it has to do with timing and instincts. And with that I reach the limits of being in touch with my feelings: I can know how I feel, and be adept at identifying my feelings, but how and when to show it requires a different kind of awareness. I have to be able to read in other people their openness and readiness to receive my interest. And with a little breath and a touch of fear, to offer it.
Ai yai yai. I wonder if they teach this in Advanced Touchy Feely.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
