Aug. 20th, 2010

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Robert Heinlein said "love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own." It's the only Heinlein quote that's stuck with me.

The happiness of the people I love really is essential to my own; if one of them is unhappy I can't get it out of my head, it sticks and grates and interferes with whatever business I'm trying to go about. No one is happy all the time; we all have our peaks and our troughs. We can all better our own condition, though; we can try new things, we can reflect on ourselves and choose new courses for our lives. Through that we become, if not happier people, at least more satisfied, contented, fulfilled-- there's less of everything that compounds unhappiness into depression, despair, and apathy.

It's hard to start moving on that path, and hard to continue along it until you gain the skill and momentum to almost coast along until the occasional rough patch trips you up again. There are a couple signposts on that road that are significant to me, and I tend to steer people close to me in those directions. Embrace your passions; challenge yourself; be aware of your needs and wants; be kind to yourself sometimes; make only worthwhile sacrifices, and those only mindfully: that's what I have for advice, and I advise and support the people I care about in doing those things.

I've been doing a lot of cheerleading lately. Encouraging someone to do something they find difficult but worthwhile is really rewarding; my empathy kicks me in both directions and I'm along for the ride with all its ups and downs, but in the end no one ever fails by trying something they really want to do. It may be an experience of education and self-reflection rather than success at the stated goal, but those experiences are valuable and anyone I spend much time with finds them so in the end. So, I encourage. I would even say that being aware enough of people's lives to know when and what constitutes appropriate encouragement is one of my own challenges; it's something I work hard at, because somewhere in there is the centre of what I consider to be love.

In love I used to be, and perhaps still am, innately possessive. I have a desire to seal up my loved one in a box, to protect them from all harm but also to be sure they can't escape. The more I go along, the more that is countered by the desire to see people fulfill their own personalities and selves, to watch them grow more powerful and interesting with every step they take into their unique personalities. I love watching someone dear to me choose a challenge and best it; that can't be done in the safety of my box and the possibility of failure or even just collateral damage along with success is always present even for me, who's just along for the ride.

I am proud to say my possessiveness is not winning this fight; indeed though it's still very present it's more a ghost than a real consideration most days.

I was going to go somewhere with this; I was going to say something about love and loss, about setting free what you love, about how I probably lose out this way but how it's worth it. I'm suddenly very tired, though. I'm also curious about how you define love; I do so differently depending on situation. The kind of love I give my relationship partners could be defined fifty ways from Saturday and I wouldn't be any closer to pinning it down; this is one definition, but it layers on top of an incredible feeling of tenderness and openness; there is desire in there for physical, mental, and spiritual closeness; there is pride; there is warmth. Millions of poets have tried to pin love down in language and so I'll stop trying here, but tell me: what is it to you?
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This Room And Everything In It

Lie still now
while I prepare for my future,
certain hard days ahead,
when I'll need what I know so clearly this moment.

I am making use
of the one thing I learned
of all the things my father tried to teach me:
the art of memory.

I am letting this room
and everything in it
stand for my ideas about love
and its difficulties.

I'll let your love-cries,
those spacious notes
of a moment ago,
stand for distance.

Your scent,
that scent
of spice and a wound,
I'll let stand for mystery.

Your sunken belly
is the daily cup
of milk I drank
as a boy before morning prayer.

The sun on the face
of the wall
is God, the face
I can't see, my soul,

and so on, each thing
standing for a separate idea,
and those ideas forming the constellation
of my greater idea.
And one day, when I need
to tell myself something intelligent
about love,

I'll close my eyes
and recall this room and everything in it:
My body is estrangement.
This desire, perfection.
Your closed eyes my extinction.
Now I've forgotten my
idea. The book
on the windowsill, riffled by wind...
the even-numbered pages are
the past, the odd-
numbered pages, the future.
The sun is
God, your body is milk...

useless, useless...
your cries are song, my body's not me...
no good ... my idea
has evaporated...your hair is time, your thighs are song...
it had something to do
with death...it had something
to do with love.

Li-Young Lee
greenstorm: (Default)
Went wandering through my past after my hopelessly incomplete writing before. Found these. The quotes are there to remind me which post is which, but I've tried to choose important and beautiful passages. I feel closer to myself than I usually am. I feel thankful to have had so many loving experiences in my life.

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