Tuesday, October 27, 2009

The Bitter-sweet: Love’s anxiety
The anxiety caused by our craving for love plays havoc with our emotions from the cradle to the grave. It causes us to behave in strange and contradictory ways. Beginning in primary school, it is often expressed in notes, carefully printed—“I love you. Do you love me? Check yes or no in one of these boxes.”
After writing such a note, I would print carefully on the front of the folded piece of paper, “Please pass to Billy Harris, and then hold my breath until I received a signal from him. If he turned to look at me with his cute grin, I could relax. If he did not look, or looked as if he were angry, I would be certain that some essential part of me was dying from his cruelty—or from my embarrassment. During the interim of the passing, there was not only the anxiety of wondering how he would react, but also the fear that the teacher may intercept the note and commit the crime of reading it to the class. Maybe, there was some denied hope that she might, and then “the whole world” would know that I loved Billy Harris. The immaturity of this experience is easily forgiven in the young. The truth is that the underlying emotions and the anxiety of wanting to be assured that we are loved remain with us throughout our lives, and we will do almost anything to gain that assurance.
With age, the simple love notes often become long letters confessing our feelings to the beloved. We try to find out what the beloved likes and dislikes, and then set about using that knowledge as bait to capture him. Most of us tend to believe that these behaviors apply only to romantic love, but over the years, I’ve come to realize that we will do almost anything to try to obtain whatever kind of love our hearts are hungry for---be it parental love, platonic or erotic love. When there is a hole in our hearts, as there nearly always is at some level by the time we reach young adulthood, or earlier, we seek the type of love most apt to heal the hole. The deep inner-conflict, the cause of the anxiety, is that from the time we are wounded by feeling rejected by someone we love, we fear that the chances of another rejection are higher than the chances of being healed. Therefore, we begin to deny our need and even behave negatively toward the other person to avoid the pain we convince ourselves will be forthcoming. This pattern of reject before being rejected allows us to feel some sense of control over our lives, which is preferable to validating that we might be unable to love, and therefore unable to be loved. To escape this painful knowledge, we close down emotionally, isolate or become addicts to anything that will keep us from living with the anxiety that is a natural part of love.
Aye, there’s the rub. We want love to feel good all the time. It doesn’t. It can’t. It won’t. Why? Because it encompasses all that we each are and that includes our doubts, our fears, our many imperfections—and our deep, dark secrets—those things we know about ourselves that separate us not only from others, but from our own souls. Secrets chisel gaping holes in our minds and hearts, where fear and anxiety grow into demons---killers of love. Dr. “Patch” Adams, whom I recently had the pleasure of hearing give one of his outrageous and thought-provoking lectures, is one of the world’s most effective healers. He believes, and I agree, that we cannot feel totally loved until we are willing to share our secrets, to share our fears and to express our anxieties. When we are able to do this and discover our beloved does not turn away, but begins to share his own dark side, we discover that the light of sharing enables love to grow. We are able to love and be loved with more confidence and less anxiety. With no love, there is no real joy in life.
If you question the validity of anything I have just written, I highly recommend that you read Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts, or any of the books by Patch Adams---then expand your love-life by sharing more of yourself—even your secrets.

Friday, January 9, 2009

Memories, Books--and Hopes for 2009


Another year has flown by, taking another year of our lives with it and leaving us with more memories- some precious, some sad, some sweet and some bitter-sweet. Although we age over time, there are aspects of us that defy time. A dear friend, who died a few years ago at the age of 101, often said that as she aged, she grew more and more thankful for her memories. One could see the glow of a 17 year old girl as she described dancing with Arthur Murray, king of the ballroom in the early years of the past century, as if it had happened the night before. I could feel her love for her first husband when she spoke of him and her grief over his death which had happened 20 years before I knew her. We are creatures of accumulated memories, and we are survivors, filled with hope that the future will hold positive changes.
Barack Obama, the soon to be President of the United States has recorded an audio-book, The Audacity of Hope, and today, he probably hopes harder than most of us that the future will hold positive changes. He dares to hope that what bonds us together is stronger than what drives us apart. Love bonds us together. Fear, that feeds violence, drives us apart. In other words, if we focus on developing our compassion for all other human beings, we could overcome our fear of differences, work together to conserve resources and make the necessary sacrifices for our species to survive far into the future.
This week, on New Year’s Day, my husband, Tim, and I climbed a 6,200 ft. mountain on the NC/TN border. There was a biting wind, which felt as if it were trying to remove the skin from our faces, but there were moments in the sun when the wind calmed and the beauty of the surroundings made it all worthwhile. I was struck by how similar this past year resembled the climb. Then quickly had the thought that perhaps every year—or even every day—resembles the climb at some level. Regardless of all the horrendous things we endure, we have no positive option except to put one foot in front of the other—with the hope that there will be moments in the sun. What composes our moments in the sun varies and can change over the span of our lives, and yet, it is hope itself that keeps us going through adversary. We can survive pain—both physical and emotional. We survive losses that rip our hearts to shreds, but as Mark Twain said upon the death of his daughter: It is amazing how much pain the human heart can endure and continue to beat.
We hope for pain to end, but it hangs tenaciously close by--until death. Therefore, we hope to learn whatever we can from the pain, for it is a master teacher. We hope for our loved ones to survive with as little pain as possible. And yet, pain seems to be an aspect of love and life that is inescapable. Above all, we must not allow hope to end. We hope to know deep and abiding love, to feel passion and the kind of joy that comes when we are able to bring joy to another. This deep gratification of sharing joy is what allows sex to be called “making love.” We hope for the kind of immortality that comes when we are remembered by those who loved us during our time on the planet. These thoughts have dominated my mind over the past few weeks as I’ve been re-reading Immortality by Milan Kundera, a Franco-Czech novelist. His novel deeply explores our desire to be immortalized—when we each want to shout to those we will leave behind at our deaths, “forget-me-not,” our final hope.
Perhaps this is why writers write--and why we love. My hope for each of you, and for myself, during this year, is that we can discover the love and compassion that binds us together is the only force that can ultimately perpetuate our survival.
Please visit my new blog: http://paddy-loveandwar.blogspot.com/