If I can offer you any piece of advice it would be this:
Live now. Life is too damn short to simply wish things were different.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

What Are We Fighting For?

It’s recently occurred to me, through many days and nights devoted to my own internal reconnaissance that perhaps love, intimate love that is….relationship love….is not necessarily worth fighting for. Or even more succinctly put, was never meant to be fought for in the first place. I don’t mean that in any dire straights manner as if to say “I’ve completely lost hope and given up on love” but I suppose I don’t quite mean the opposite of that either, as if to say “I’m blissfully optimistic that true love is and will forever be a possibility.” My point here more focuses on the “fight” we often put up for love. I just don’t think I believe in “fighting” for love and here is why:

To fight for something ultimately implies two truths: 1) you face some barrier/obstacle/struggle between you and what you’re fighting for and 2) that you are attempting to gain something…perhaps control of something, ownership of something, etc. Those two truths, when applied to love, in my mind, just don’t make sense. 1) If you face barriers/obstacles/struggles to be with someone you love…to create an intimate relationship with that person, I would have to ask one question…why all the barriers? Perhaps it’s timing? Perhaps it’s just not meant to be right now? Or at all? And of course the concept of “meant to be” should be covered in an entirely different blog. But if we can honestly ask ourselves “why is it just so hard,” we might find a sense of calm in the realization that it shouldn’t be that hard. It doesn’t have to be that hard. Fighting the universe in a sense…doing something that doesn’t feel good or even worse, feels unnatural, wouldn’t seem to amount to anything worth fighting for in the end anyway right? The barriers and obstacles are there for whatever reason and attempting to fight them, in my opinion, will only end up hindering the very relationship you’re after.

And the second truth is one that pretty much seals the deal for me. This idea of ownership that we (as a people all over the world) have come to love so much is the very thing that destroys most relationships…again, in my opinion. Sayings such as “you’re MY one and only,” “you’re MY girlfriend/boyfriend,” “I can’t wait to make you MINE,” have completely falsified the idea of commitment within a romantic relationship. The mere fact that we as human beings could be arrogant enough (all through things we’ve learned over time) to think that we actually “own” ANYTHING, let alone another person is absurd to me. And yet the semantics of our “relationship language” consistently dance around this concept of what we “have,” what is “ours,” and what is all “mine” forever and ever AMEN!!! Bullshit. We don’t own shit. We don’t even own our own bodies! We’re simply renting it out for the time we have on Earth and yes, have the freedom to do with it what we want…but ultimately don’t own it.

Accepting this lack of ownership offers a level of comfort and relief along with a devastating pain and discomfort when it comes to intimate relationships. The pain and discomfort comes from the long history of learned behavior based around the concept of “ownership” and the desire to still want to try and “own” things. But I feel a sense of comfort knowing that if I simply stop trying to “own” someone as “mine” or define what “we” are…that I am able to just be…and in turn, be in the presence of others whom I allow to just be. And that….to me…that sounds like the healthiest starting point for any relationship.

I won’t fight anymore. I’ll allow myself to just be….

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