The time has come for a personal post. The idea that artists express human emotion comes from the reality that life is amazing and often hard, and the expression of these emotions thru music, acting, speech, writing, dance, painting, ect. is a major part of being human and touching other human beings on this planet.
The following is my thesis on love. Hindsight might one day say it was motivated by an artists heart passing thru a midlife funk, but time will tell.
Love and Love Lost
Love has got to be the most talked about, written about,
sang about, anticipated and damaging event a person can experience in life.
There is nothing more complex, confusing and complicated in the human
experience.
We humans are designed for love by God. God Himself is love.
The very essence of God is love. We have been marked and created with the
ability to love and be loved. The problem is, we live in a broken world, and
our ability to love, at best is a broken love.
Our ability to understand our relationships is colored and
viewed thru the eyes of being broken people with selfish and often hurt or
damaged perceptions.
When we fall in love, anticipation and excitement is
everywhere. What we see is a person that has been made to be bigger than life; a
person that is the most amazing person that ever lived; a person that has more
qualities and compatibility than any other human that has ever existed. I have heard thousands of best man toasts at
weddings over the years. I have done thousands of weddings. Every couple is the
best, most perfect match ever in the history of the world; at least on that
day. Statistics might suggest a different truth, but I digress.
New Relationships move on and as time progresses, reality
begins to adapt that original perception and we start to see flaws, that always
existed, but were never noticed before. As we continue in a love relationship,
we tend to grow in self actualization, and decline in adoration of the other
person we so love.
What we bring to the table is who we are. What else could we
bring? We bring all of our past relationships, lessons learned, family of
origin skills and dysfunction, expectations, hopes and dreams, good and bad
friends of influence, and our perceptions of love that are based in a fantasy
that has ongoing conflict with reality as time progresses.
If you had been in a serious relationship anytime prior to
this new love, you bring your conflict resolution skills or dysfunction, your
attitudes during difficult times in that relationship, your fighting
techniques, your depth of engagement in a battle, how mean you can be, the
language you used before, and all the intensity that could be nothing more than
an extension of previous fight with a different face.
You can be quick to shut down or to quick to engage. You
might raise your voice or stop talking at all to the other person using the
silent treatment. It’s all based on your perception of the opposite sex and
“lessons learned” from your previous relationships.
The problem is, God created us in His image, which includes
a deep level of complexity. Our world view is seen as undisputable fact, yet
acts from the perceptions and damage from our past. I don’t know if we ever
really see the facts or even can see them.
In the beginning of a relationship, we see them with rose colored glasses. At
the end of a relationship we see them from an altered and reverse state. When
we first meet, they can do no wrong. When we split, they are wrong!
This is one of the things that most disturbs me about the
whole process because we delete the beauty of a love we had, and quickly
destroy any memory that would imply loss or hurt for the sake of feeling better
about our situation. We then take what we ‘know to be true’ into a new
relationship and most of this ‘truth’ is misinformation at best. How true could
it be if it was all just changed? How confident can we be about all these
rewritten chapters, when we are honest with ourselves about full belief in the
previous edition of our history book?
When a relationship fails, the strangest thing happens. The
most tender, loving person in our lives becomes a creep. The memories that are
the deepest moments of human sharing and loving become our deepest moments of
pain. The very things that blessed our lives become pain. I think it is an
issue of self preservation. The pain of a real loss often seems to imply the
need to diminish the value of that loss to survive the moment.
In one moment, we cross the line and begin rewriting all of
our personal history since our pain requires a little relief. The things that
our spouse or lover said that hurt a little, but we tried to let go as
something we took the wrong way, now becomes one of the many examples we have
of how horrible this person really was. The balance is now gone for any of the
facts, if we could even accept or see them. And the balance of including the
other half of the story to round our memories out has been removed, greatly
reducing the probability of ever remembering the truth about our past
relationship.
We surround ourselves with new friends and a few old friends for support. For
the most part, we bring our deep hurt and our side of the story to the table,
from a perspective that is now being rewritten to post all blame on another.
We seem to go thru our personal history and rewrite every
event that occurred within that relationship to fit with our new reality and
perceptions on that evil person and horrible relationship. With our new friend
base, we get all the encouragement to grow past our hurt and a new personal history
thesis. Our good friends believe us, hate the other person now too, and begin
to rewrite there history chapters on that person. Often the “support group”
finds great success in rebuilding a story that can allow you to be glad, and
eventually feel pity for that loser you once loved.
Problem is, it is all based in a new fantasy. The other
person is now the cause of all the worlds’ problems and your greatest goal
becomes moving on and away from an evil villain that you can now feel sorry for
because they are sooooo messed up.
Then starts the process all over. A new person… Awe the new
friend that lights up when we walk in the room. The excitement of someone that
seems to really care about us for who we are, a much better person now, than
before, and you are ready for a new relationship now!
We move into new relationships with all the anticipation
and excitement that new friends can bring, but a little scared and cautious that
we not be hurt like before. The view of this new person and our entire lives
are conditional to that history rewrite that is now published in 24 languages
and a best seller.
I used to think we brought our baggage into the next
relationship, unless we took the time to deal with the stuff. A girlfriend on
the rebound never works. I then learned that time does not heal. That is a lie.
Time only gives us a date for when the new and improved personal history
edition was released, with all the misinformation needed to feel good about ourselves
and ready to move into that new relationship. Let’s face it; chances have got
to be much better with this new guy or girl because it is not the evil villain
that tried to destroy us before.
We can probably all agree that time does not heal, but you
worked thru your hurt and pain and are happy now. It took a couple of weeks or
a couple of years and you are ready and confident love is going to work this
time.
Let’s go back to my opening thoughts for a moment. We are
all broken. We live on a broken planet. We might not be the spawn of Satan, but
we do screw up, make mistakes, get tired, answer tersely, have real life
pressures, things go wrong, people are misunderstood, we are misunderstood; the
list goes on and on. We screw up, others screw up.
We take who we are into a new relationship, with our
convincing rewrite in hand and an acceptable amount of baggage, to try to do it
all again. We start with the same unrealistic fantasy that this time has to be
different due to the obvious change of guard. Yet we are the same person, now
acting under new misinformation from the Self Preservation Act of 2008 – A
Personal History Revised.
We find things getting real in our new boyfriend or
girlfriend. We start to have conflict. We don’t realize it, but start acting
out of old hurt and all the ‘lessons we have learned’, that are always viewed
as facts even though these facts went thru a dozen rewrites before the copy we
now hold.
What happens is we don’t take some of the most important
things into account. Who is the person you are now in relationship with? How
are they different than other people you have dated? Am I acting as if I was
dealing with my ex right now or my current love? Are they growing and changing
people? Can you even see the changes and growth or are you assuming they are
like the ex and never going to change? How hard do you push? How long does a
good fight last? How deep is the intensity of the last fight? Is it appropriate
to the importance of the issue you disagreed on, or driven by the need to win a
fight because your personal history says you have to be right at least half the
time, and NEVER was before!
We make mistake after mistake, often fighting with ghosts
from the past, now hurting this person we do truly love. We dismantle that love
one mistake at a time until it is gone. We then find ourselves hurt and damaged
yet again; wondering why people can’t be better people in the first place and
begin to seriously doubt our ability to find a good person in this world.
We follow that same process thru again and again, through varied levels of relationship, thinking
we are ready or healed or educated enough to move on; all viewed from the
misinformation of another personal history rewrite for the sake of sanity.
“How could you say that? How could you think you loved me
and be so cruel? Did you think I would put up with that forever? I pity you.
You are a mess. You are evil. I hate you. I am over you. I will never be in
another relationship like ‘that’ ever again.”
To truly love and then despise seems like it should not be possible,
yet so many times an ex lover is “such a jerk” and it’s difficult to explain
“what you ever saw in that looser.” This even happens with close friends we have grown to love. The friendship dissolves under life's pressures and the person we once confided in can become the worst person in the world with our new world view.
Can we be friends once all hell has broke loose? Issue comes back to the
history rewrite. We can try and be friends but everything we had in common has
now been turned upside down. The good times sucked. The acts of kindness, love,
sexual connection, intensity, life sharing, family, extended family, mutual
friends, tenderness, joy, belonging, acceptance, wholeness; are now relegated
to hurt and the delete button. The moments of conflict, fights,
misunderstandings, accidental hurts and even mean moments of acting out of past
baggage; now are the defining moments of that relationship and make up our 100%
view of that creep we once loved.
Since there are 2 different people, with varying stages of
rewrite involved and completely different bottom lines, being friends becomes
the hardest thing in the world. Everything you experienced in life together has
been changed forever. With time these things can become a little less impacting
but the truth remains, you and your new ex-lover will never see eye to eye
again.
Somehow we accomplish this from the same facts, living them
together at the same time. It just kills me to be the villain to someone I cared
so deeply for. It kills me to think of the times that I was the cause of hurt
and pain for that person. It kills me to look at the way I contributed to
pushing away a person that I loved. And it kills me to see and hear about
myself as the villain while reading parts of the history rewrite in that other
person’s book.
You might think that this is how the cycle ends; by owning
up to your part of the problems, maybe some counseling and waiting before
getting involved; moving slowly and playing it safe from there.
I did too.
The first step of any 12 step program is admitting the
problem. You can’t fix something you don’t even know is wrong.
Problem is I now know that I can’t see the facts, removed
from myself. I can listen to the rewrite from other books and try and be open
to much of that information being true. I can try really hard to look at the
hard truth about myself and accept where I suck as a person. But what I can’t
do is have any confidence that I will ever be able to really see and understand
any of this. I’m in the middle of it.
You know the old saying? “Too close to see the forest from
the trees.” In my whole life, the only time I think I have seen anything very
clearly was when looking back at history that can not be changed. You can’t go
back and change any part of the past. You can see the failure, but it’s done. It’s
history now and been revised for even greater impact!
”Learn from the past and move on.” Great! I’ll try and embrace that one (sigh).
Fact of the matter is, I know I can’t do it. Every time I get to a hill and
look over my shoulder, I see the above listed story, playing itself out again.
Is “it better to have loved and lost than never to have
loved at all?” Even being aware of the fact that we all rewrite our history and
the personal history books of people I have loved are not very accurate and
certainly not very kind; I’d have to say the fact they can remember me in those
horrible terms is heartbreaking. If communication is more about what someone
hears than what you thought you said, then there is good argument that I did
say that hurtful thing, if that’s what they heard.
Sure, our personal history books are written with the view
that we are all broken people but basically very good with a few problems. I
can’t tell you how many people have told me, “I’m a good person!” At what point
do you look at yourself and think these lovers would have been much better off
if I had not been a part of there lives at all?
I don’t think it is possible to see ourselves in an
accurate, truthful manner. I don’t think any of us will ever be able to look at
our past lives and loves and ever see them without the complexity of emotion
and later hurt that changed the story into the altered memories that linger. I
don’t think that any amount of effort will clear the fog either. I know, that
where time does not heal, it does add perspective, but I also feel compelled to
discount that perceptive due to the lack of accurate references in the personal
history I have on file.
Bottom line – love sucks. It is unfair, inaccurate and
broken at best. The only way to avoid being the object of another persons hurt
or personal pain yourself, either perceived or in reality, is to realize that
you love the person too much to play the game. Since it only takes 50% of any
relationship to effect 100% of dozens of lives, and the percentage of relational
success falls under dumb luck, single digits in the big picture, I think it is
time to break the cycle once and for all.
Self preservation screams at us to act; fight or flight. Yet
neither seems responsible at this point in life. The only thing I know to do
that might break the cycle at this point is to be honest with myself about love, love from a distance, and find
the love to accept the relational demise, loving enough to truly let go, to the
point of honest excitement for that person as life brings new loves, friends and
experiences into there life.
Can’t say this looks easy or fun, but what are the options? I don't even know if it can work in the real world, but it looks like my last attempt at honest
dealing, being true to myself as a human being, rather than selling out to the relational cycle of either giving up on love
completely or not caring about the damage that loving brings.
Janet Jackson asks the question in a song, “Am I just
another page in your history?” I guess the answer is always YES. Just add a few
rewrites for the latest edition and the new and improved version is on the New
York Times best sellers list.
Socrates said, “Know thyself.” I wish it seemed possible.
Even the Greeks of that day “thought that no man can ever comprehend the human
spirit and thought thoroughly, so it would have been almost inconceivable to
know oneself fully.” (Wikipedia)
This is my thesis on love, friendship and relationships gone bad.
…a few observations.
No real answers.
Sorry……
Greg Vail
