Wednesday, February 24, 2010

The tide, revisited

I went to write an email to Kristy, and I realized it was a post anyway.

T's mother apparently gets regular emails from The Universe, and she forwarded one recently, which is a particular favorite of hers. It read:

Sometimes, [T's Mom], having more fun and being happier comes from looking for each in crazy, new places; instead of waiting for them to come from where you've found them before or where others are now finding them.

And I do mean crazy. Not just from the old standbys of travel, adventure, and romance, but from stretching, reaching, and growing. Accepting new responsibilities for your happiness, totally accepting others, and grasping even higher ideals. Philosophically taking yourself to places few have ever dared before.

Red hot smokin' love,

The Universe


Aside from the attractions of being offered red-hot, smokin' love from the Universe, I found it interesting she should send me this right now, because it feels like all the events in my life are converging into that one lesson: "Stretching, reaching, growing." I thought I had emerged from the divorce pretty well stretched, reached, and grown, but now it appears that those challenges were just preparation for the opportunities that lay ahead. To mix and torture metaphors, the atomic reorganization of my life opened a painfully creaky door, but I still had to walk through it, and explore the rooms beyond.

In the back of my mind I had this cute notion that I'd get divorced, spend a year not dating while I gave myself the perfectly prescribed time to "work on myself", move on, eventually find someone, have a great, normal relationship, move in together or perhaps marry, blend families if applicable, and look around one day with a self-satisfied smile and say "Look, see? I've done it right this time." Counseling would be required, of course, and probably a great deal of dating and sifting. It would be hard, but not too hard.

Wrong, kitten.

One of life's most effective disciplinary tools is the realization, whether abrupt or gradual, that your future and your life will look nothing like you thought they would.* There are deaths, illnesses, betrayals, divorces, accidents, losses, gains, and lessons. I had one very abrupt realization in May 2008 that my life would look radically different than I had hoped, expected, or thought. But I don't think I ever completely absorbed the lesson from that, which is to let go, to ride the tide, and to open myself to the possibilities of the unknown instead of rigidly adhering to my visions and plans.

There was no year of singleness. Instead, with perfect contrariness, the Universe served up T as if on cue, and he parachuted into my life via e-mail on the day my divorce was final. We have an in-joke in which we observe that he was single for ten years, and I was single for ten minutes.

And then, over the ensuing nine months, I have bobbed and weaved, vacillated and quivered, as I discovered that T was going to commit the shocking act of being human instead of, at all times, my preconceived ideal of a mate. But by then I was in quite the pickle, because I'd begun to love him.

Into this morass stepped Therapist C, as she so often does, with her quiet laugh and her empathetic smile and her gentle, forward-leaning stance, to remind me to stop trying to control life and start listening to it instead. What was I learning from this? What was life demanding of me?

Stretching, reaching, growing. Totally accepting others.

The lesson I'm learning from being with T is that loving fully involves risk -- that security can never be the currency with which love is bartered. Love must be given freely, without a purchase price, or it's no kind of love at all. Relationships are about growth, and about loving, not when and if you can blend households, or get married, or feel that you have once again gained admission to structure and normality.

T gets into my life and makes noise there. Sometimes he does it with a smile and a sharp wit, and sometimes he does it with his own pain and defenses. But I always feel loved, and valued -- more so than I've ever felt, really.

I didn't need someone to make me secure. I needed to learn to live without it, because, as Pema Chodron reminds us, there is no ground beneath us.

And that's where I am right now.



*Sometimes, in a particularly harsh version of this lesson, we discover that our past was also not what we thought it was. While even more painful in ways, this is just as effective a catalyst for change and growth.

7 comments:

  1. Crazy new places. I think I could use some of those. Sounds like you've been there and are learning heaps. I'm proud of you!

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  2. Having someone to love, and who loves you back--unconditionally--means that you don't have to find out about no ground beneath your feet, unless you choose to. You already know what you can do after G and before T. You did it.

    The main thing, is to be open to the unexpected places of happiness and love. If the ground shifts, we roll with it. Such is life and for the most part it is a wonderful journey.

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  3. *"Sometimes, in a particularly harsh version of this lesson, we discover that our past was also not what we thought it was. While even more painful in ways, this is just as effective a catalyst for change and growth".

    Something to think about!

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  4. Having someone to love, and who loves you back--unconditionally--means that you don't have to find out about no ground beneath your feet, unless you choose to.

    I guess I disagree with this a bit, Jeannie. One of the many events recently that had me thinking along these lines was the one-year anniversary of the sudden death of the father of a dear friend of mine. His parents had been married, happily, for a long time.

    And his mother found out very abruptly that her future would look different than she ever imagined, and, of course, that there was no ground beneath her. And there isn't for *any* of us. Well, there is, but it's not what we think. It is, as Viktor Frankl said, the only thing that can't be taken from us -- the freedom to choose our own attitude in a given set of circumstances.

    Just ruminating. :)

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  5. We can't agree on everything :) Let me put my feelings a different way; what happened to your friend's Mom is horrible. She doesn't get to continue on with life as she knew it. If my son is killed while deployed, I couldn't either. One can prepare and prepare and prepare and still not be prepared for what life dishes out. I get that. What I'm talking about is this--when one is lucky enough to have someone to share life with, there is so much that is done or acted upon by pure faith. We will never fully understand ourselves, others, or this great big world we live in. There is no way to. What we can do is proceed, day by day--because really, that is all we have--this day. And for this day, we keep ourselves open to all the unique experiences that come our way and embrace them. Hot smokin' love--right in front of our faces if we can stop asking all of the questions of why or where or how long enough to embrace it.

    In other words, the changing, the growing, the stretching and so many other ordinary things besides are part of the universal tapestry. What we see on this side, isn't what the weave necessarily looks like on the other--but it is still a part of the same thing. Things change. Love ebbs and flows. Life changes unexpectedly. And I totally agree our attitude makes the difference.

    We need to live for now. Not for what if. Our what if's usually end up being something totally different than imagined. One thing that your friend's mom will possibly experience from her heartache is a new growth and strength from what has happened with her husband's death. A catalyst for growth, though not sought after in this way, nevertheless is hers to embrace and grow from and become stronger than she ever knew was possible.

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  6. I don't think we disagree at all, really. :)

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  7. Oh, and Fran - yes. It's something to think about. :)

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