| |
Here is an email that I've just sent to my love. There is a lot of feeling in it, but I am sure some good old intellectual noodling got in there, with a dash of ego. Nonetheless, I just think that these words might be of use to others.
Here:
————————————————-
Tisha,
maybe it'll get old one day, or maybe it is already old, but I will keep saying it as long as I mean it. And I don't believe I'll ever not mean it.
And that thing is: I love you.
I just walked home from work, and I was thinking about you a lot. I was thinking about our relationship and what it's made up of, and I was also generally just dwelling on my feelings for you.
I don't think that there is such a thing as a perfect relationship. Perfection doesn't really exist - it's just an ideal that we create and hope to realise.
A relationship isn't about acheiving perfection. It's about relating to another person during whatever it is you're experiencing or going through. But a happy relationship is a relationship where there is truth, truth in the form of words (honesty) and otherwise. If I created an ideal in my mind of a great relationship, I'd probably say that it wouldn't contain any fighting, misunderstanding, hate, jealousy, etc, etc. But as these are contradictory to the ideals that we aim for, and because we would feel like our relationships are failing if those things were there, we often have the compulsion to cover them up and pretend that they aren't there.
But, again, a happy relationship, or a relationship full of real gratitude, is a relationship that is full of truth. Truth allows us to open our hearts, and opening our hearts allows us truth. We have to sometimes be brave in order to face and admit truth, and the same goes for our relationship with life itself, or, you could say, the same goes for our relationship with ourselves. Every day, we need to face the truth, we need to face ourselves and everything there, such as fear, desire, anger, etc.
In this world, we are all stuck in mud. It's a world with violence, hatred, anger, etc, and these things are inside us, too. We are troubled. I think that when two people come together to relate, the two involved can help each other to open heart. There is great potential for this. This happens when the two people bring truth into the relationship.
There is also the potential for those involved to help close each others hearts. This happens when the two involved do not want to bring truth into the relationship.
So, is a relationship something that we should want perfection (or so-called perfection) in? A relationship works best when two people are ready to face the truth, when they are willing to acknowledge the so-called imperfections that they perceive. It's not about having an absence of so-called imperfections, it's about two people coming together to help each other to open heart, to help each other face truth. One person can help another to face his or her own self and life and all that comes along with it. Trust plays a big part in this.
It is difficult to have a truthful relationship with someone that we don't trust, because trust relates directly to our own fears about having our own difficulties, having things that do not meet our ideals, i.e. fear, hate. We feel that allowing someone into our lives/truths - into the things that do not meet our ideals, the things that we see as ugly - would lead that person to judge us or withold their love. We need to trust that the other person will not withold their love and that they will be able to embrace the truth.
I am grateful for our relationship, Tish. I am especially grateful when I am especially aware of how our relationship is and how it is developing, and when I am aware of what we have been through thus far. I have never had a relationship before that has contained so much opening up and so much truth. I am so grateful for you and your ability to embrace me and whatever I am, or for embracing whatever I have revealed to you, although I'm sure you've also probably seen things that I haven't consciously revealed.
But this is not to say that there is a complete presence of truth in our relationship. There are still boundaries between us, and we have the potential to break those barriers down. That is exactly where the relationship comes in - the relationship is for us to break down those boundaries, to continuously move forwards and face things together. But we have to be brave and bring truth, we have to acknowledge those boundaries, those places that we don't feel comfortable treading on, and we need to trust each other.
As I said, I was thinking about our relationship on the way home. I thought about how our relationship isn't “perfect.” Yes, there is definately love. I am so certain that there is love, an abundance of love, real love. But I am aware that I also have desires in the relationship, that I want things from you for my own gain.
There is a thing that we create, and I guess you can call it the ego. This thing is our defence system. In our unreadiness to face truth, we create this thing so that we may be distracted from the blistering truth, so that we do not have to face the things that we consider to be imperfect or bad, so that we do not have to face the things that we fear might destroy all the things that we hold dear. We are driven to feed this thing like a slave and strengthen it with all the things that fit within it's fight against truth. We don't want it to come crashing down. Perhaps you could say that it is our ultimate attachment, the ego itself. We feel we absolutely need it for survival.
I use you. I use you to feel better about my world. There are certain things that I believe will deliver me to happiness and peace. I believe that having this nice girl who loves me and wants me will deliver me to happiness and peace. I believe that being in a nice, perfect relationship is what I need. So, I try to pretend that I have this with you, and I am afraid of discovering otherwise. For this reason, I am attached to you, I am attached to our relationship, and I try to believe that our relationship is only good and is perfect. It makes the suffering of my whole life that bit more manageable when I convince myself that I have these things. They make me feel more secure.
From time to time, a fear comes into me about our relationship, and I feel like pushing you and the relationship away. Firstly, I become aware that there is attachment for you and the relationship in me. Secondly, I judge this as a bad thing, as an imperfection, which is something that I feel isn't ideal, and thus I feel that our relationship will fail with it there. Then, thirdly, I fear losing what I am attached to. It's a vicious cycle.
But lately, when this cycle comes up, I have managed to realise that none of these so-called imperfections are wrong or “imperfect.” I have managed to realise that my attachment, fear or anger are not things that, on their own, will cause any damage. Damage will only be caused by my inability to accept them, my inability to live in truth. There is nothing wrong with my attachment to you and the desires that I have regarding you. Perhaps one day I will not be attached to you, and perhaps that will only come through my acceptance of the attachment in the first place. But I need not feel like this attachment should not be here. It is here, that's the way it is, it's not wrong. It is empty, it is harmless as it is. I need not fear.
I have found peace when I have managed to realise these this.
Sometimes I get scared because I see my desire for things that I want in life. When I feel full of desire, I feel like I am out of control. It is scary to feel out of control, because we are also attached to control! Being out of control would mean that we do not have the ability to hold on to what we are attached to, to the things that make us feel safe. Yet we are attached to control, too, because it makes us feel safe. What a cycle, what a bunch of cobwebs within cobwebs within cobwebs to infinity. We don't need to pull anything in or push anything away, we just need to let go, to let go of the cycle, to take our foot of the accelerator.
I love you, my friend, my partner. I am so grateful towards you. May whatever happens happen, but may I always have the capacity to love you.
~Adam
——————————————————————
|
Help
Sign In
RSS Feed
Permalink
Print
Email
