Relationship FAIL

You know, I really hate the fact that my last long-term relationship was with a narcissist. It sort of highlights in neon-bright colors the my abysmal record of failure in relationships. I'm lead to ask: is there really something wrong with me that I get into bad and/or doomed relationships? Am I simply incapable of finding/co-creating a lasting, stable, good relationship? Am I attracted to the wrong kind of men? Am I the wrong kind of man?

I suppose I need to find my purpose and meaning in something other than relationships, but I have to admit that even the most fascinating intellectual pursuits do not carry the emotional oomph that relationships do. Is there anything in life I can be as passionate about as love?

How to Reject, How to Take Rejection

How to Reject:

If someone shows his interest in you, and you do not feel the same, the best thing to do is simply to let the person know that you are flattered, but not interested. Expect him to be mature, and go on. If he isn't mature, that's his problem. Drama is always counterproductive. Always.

How to Take Rejection:

If someone you are interested in rejects you, move on. Yes, it hurts, but life is full of pain, and surviving is all about learning to accept the pain and moving on. I won't say something trite like, "There are plenty of fish in the sea." That actually may not be true. But there is more to life than sex, love and romantic relationships. And I suggest pursuing those other things.

Instead of Another Bad Romance, I Need a Rad Bromance

Having survived the warfare of love, and convalesced in the hospice of taking care of myself, I believe I have arrived at some new insights. Not only have I been looking for love in all the wrong places; I would have done better not to look for love at all, at least not in the traditional sense. I don't need a romance—I need a bromance.


I need someone to go shopping with, to help me figure out which home improvements to make, to hang out at the bar with, and most of all to go to soccer and lacrosse matches with (heck, I'd even go to see hockey and basketball games, as a trade off). A pal, a bud, a dude to chill with. He could be gay, bi or straight—it wouldn't matter because sex would not be a factor.* As long as he is a decent, stand-up guy, and we can get along, I think it would be fun.


And fun is the key. True, I want friends in my life to help me carry the burdens of living—the horrors of the daily grind, the heartaches of loss, etc. But I strongly suspect that the persons best suited to help carry the burdens are also the ones who most adeptly help one lighten the loads by lightening up. Relationships should be fun.


So I'm going forward looking for good friends, people worthy of investing time away from myself alone. I know they are out there. I just haven't had my eyes sighted correctly.

---

*Years of singleness and a handful of atrocious hook-ups have taught me to be sexually self-contained.

A Total Exposition of Reality

There is no mystery, only reality. So, here is reality. The reason the Taoists divided everything into yin-yang is because it is a shorthand for everything. Female-male are polarities, not absolutes, and things shuffle back and forth between the polarities. True masculinity, true feminity is actually very rare.

Next, every religion posits metaphors for reality. Torah, New Testament, Al-Qu'ran al-kareem, the Upanishads, the Sutras, etc. - metaphors. Estimations and descriptions of the truth - not the truth itself. You cannot encapsulate the truth in words. Run at it, yes; bang your head against it, yes. Capture it and tie it down - no fucking way.

Next, you are free.

Fourth, recheck number 3: you are free. This is much bigger than choosing whether to put pickles on your sandwich. On Monday morning you can walk into your office and quit your job for no fucking reason whatsoever, because you are free. Or just don't show up. Yeah, you'll loose your home (or maybe you won't - who knows?). But that doesn't constrain you from quitting your job. Or going postal. Or just not showing up any more. You are free.

Next - we're up to five now, right? - society = religion, and religion = society. No one wants to deal with that total freedom, so they make up rules, call it God's Law, and impose it on themselves and each other. Durkheim was right: society is the totem, and the totem is society. What you have chosen to believe is a system designed to keep you from quitting your job/going postal/etc. (BTW, I am totally NOT recommending going postal. That's entirely up to you. As for me, there are other ways - read on.)

Six - You. Are. Beautiful.

Seven - re-read Six. This isn't about G-d. YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. Because you are the result of a mega-fucking Big Bang as the Universe expresses itself, and as each fucking star burns its fuel out and hurtles itself across aeons to extinction, and as a single mote of dust falls past a sunray through a window pane, you yourself are integral to that. The oxygen emerging from a pine needle, a kitten's mew, a raccoon's fart, the intake of the first breath of a newborn human baby - you are part of that. Tied to it on a subatomic level. GOOD GREAT UNIVERSE, I LOVE ALL OF YOU IN TOTALITY AND IN PARTICULARS, BECAUSE YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. 'Nuff said.

Ocho - because you beautiful, and you are a blip in the long-ass wave from the first fart of the big bang to the last wimper of the last dying star, we need you now. Good, bad or ugly - we need you now. As a participant. Breathe and go.

Neun - Love is simply this: be here now.

Sgohi - Now is always Tao - Now is always in flux. How can you be 'here' when 'here' is always in flux? Figure this out, and you figure out love.

I Love...

Elderly couples who walk hand-in-hand. Little girls randomly jumping and singing out of pure joy and energy. A raccoon who pauses to commune with me as I make my way home. Skaters tearing up a concrete ditch in a southern exurb. The sound the wind makes in a pine forest. Lone thunderclouds on the plains. My cat curled up against my legs during the long, dark night. Excellent chord progressions. Mangos. The stillness of an owl watching me from across the street. The college student grooving his ass off listening to his tunes while waiting for a Metro train. A book bound with care and precision. Sparrows asking for crumbs in the park. Dogs. The feeling when my team scores. Uncontrollable laughter. My bare feet on beach sand. The smell of patchouli. Hiking. Hot coffee and the time to savor it. The memory of my grandfather in his garden at sunrise, with my dog patrolling the rows in solidarity with him. Waterfalls in the Blue Ridge mountains. Ice water.

Faith, Hope and Love Are Dead—Now Going toward the Within

The surest sign a person has that he's reached midlife is to look around and see a debris field where he had assumed his world would be. Faith, hope and love were useful ideas for a while, but they've failed to live up to reality. Love was just lust in disguise, and unable to withstand the winds of change and the vicissitudes of damaged people. Faith withered in the light of reality and the simple facts of day-to-day living. Hope was a slogan for a political campaign, and we then discovered the slogan should have been "timidity and appeasement."

What can I count on now?

I suspect the next phase of my life will be about discovering that all my resources are within. It should be interesting.

Four Ways of Pursuing Fulfillment

To my mind, there are four* ways that a person can use toward making meaning and fulfillment in his life: career, love, volunteerism and hobbies.

A very few fortunate persons actually manage to find a fulfilling career in life. They enjoy their work, and getting up to go to work isn't a challenge for them. Most of us aren't so fortunate. Most of the jobs needing to be done in the world are not the kind that bring fulfillment, and we who have them must simply put up with the daily grind of getting them done.

Love can be very fulfilling in life, but love requires two people, and therefore at least half of the equation is out of one's hands. If an opportunity to love comes up, I strongly recommend not passing it by casually. On the otherhand, I highly recommend observing the other person and the situation closely. Sometimes what looks like love is only dependency, and all sorts of terrors can await those who pursue love blindly. Love is wonderful, but like a fulfilling career, it too is very rare.

Volunteerism can be highly fulfilling. When one finds a cause or effort that one wholely embraces and supports, and can lend one's energy and/or talents to it, putting up with the vicissitudes of ones daily grind can become worth the effort. It is important to know oneself first, so that a person can find the cause or effort that falls in line with one's own values. Also, one must have some flexibility in dealing with others, ranging from flaky volunteers to hardcore true believers.

Hobbies are an excellent way to funnel one's energy into engaging effort. It is especially easy when one chooses a hobby, to find a task with scalable challenges. In other words, as one improves in a given hobby, one can choose increasingly difficult challenges to pursue in it. E.g., if you've manages to embroider a particular design, the next design you choose to embroider can be more complex and therefore more challenging and engaging.

---

*I'm sure there are more, but these are the four that come to mind right now.

Urban Hell

It has become a running joke and/or standard operating procedure that whenever there is a big accident/crisis/lunatic freak-out happening inside the beltway, I call my mom and let her know I'm nowhere near it, of if I am, I'm okay. So yesterday evening I called her to let her know I was downtown, and not near Silver Spring and the situation in the Discovery Building. (Although at least once a month after work I go right past that building on the way to Borders, DSW, Strosniders, Whole Foods, or somewhere else.) I tell mom and dad that dealing with whackos, protests, motorcades, etc. are just part of life in DC. They range from merely inconvenient to terribly dangerous, but we simply have to take it all in stride.

I moved to DC for love (and to get the hell out of Charlotte, NC, a town which embraced the metanarrative of 'suburban hell' and made it its ideal.) I stayed for love, and when love failed, for the convenience of not having to own a car and easy access to museums and similar diversions.

But staying in DC has taken its toll. I arrived optimistic and eager. Now, almost sixteen years later, the optimism is gone, and enthusiasm takes a whole hell of a lot of effort to build up. This is a poisonous city. The natives resent all the newcomers. The newcomers are themselves here only to make some kind of career move, and only want to deal with people who can help them climb the career ladder. The few of us who don't fit into those paradigms have to make our own way, by our own devices.