(audio available: springtime-reflection )
Some people spend all their lives together. I’ve seen it; so I know it’s possible and, for many, true. I often wonder how it happens, particularly as I’ve never known it by more than observations and even that, often fraught with puzzlement for the ways the couples I’ve known spat, spit, and fight and still, never as much as touch the bedrock that seems to ensure all of it is little more than a transient breeze.
That’s the part that puzzles me, of course. In my experience, every argument is an excuse for someone to leave. Does that mean anything? Everything? What does it mean? Well, other than that whatever I thought we were standing on was far less sturdy than believed.
I have only left two relationships in my life. One for abuse and the other for lies. The first, many years ago and the second, only just last autumn. The rest? As previously stated.
I have for some time suspected that I am too different to find anyone with whom I might find bedrock. Life and experience only seems to more and more precisely demonstrate this as a sound conclusion. The intellect insists it is not valid; after all, I am human. It just seems a curious condition of marginalization; evironments and experience rendering me alien in human form and, as soon as recognized as such, set aside.
I am too idealistic, too ethical and, in both, too rigid. I’ve heard it enough from others to believe that it is likely “true” enough in a cultural and social sense. It makes me sad, though; how is it that being so has become so unpopular, so repulsive? I think I’m too far outside the lines to know; the reasons I guess just make me feel somewhat hopeless about it all; I do not think I can change unless by some serious and total breakage of being that would render me worse in entirely new ways. Thus, hopeless.
I thought I found someone who believed in the moment as infinite possibility, but they just thought it was what I wanted to hear (lying). There always seems to arrive the moment in which it becomes obvious and then, nothing but their goodbye. It’s annoying and frustrating to me until I realize that others can no more change in these ways than I can. The flavor of that kind of doom is a salty, sour thing.
The more I think about things, the more I am convinced there is absolutely no rhyme or reason to life. No one can tell us why some things happen, some things work out, and others…. simply don’t. No matter how much time or effort one might apply, the entire matter of ever understanding any of it remains impenetrable; the ultimate question mark; second only to death itself.
I spent the first part of my life looking out for myself and asking nothing from anyone. I have spent the most recent part thinking I could change this; that there would be anyone for whom I might give and with whom I might share. I find that I was wiser before, and that it is foolish to pretend otherwise. There is nothing another can give me that I cannot give myself; any of it likely more fully and better for knowing myself and my needs.
There are those things that humans, simply by being human, have a need to give others. But the important things, I think, we must always give ourselves. No one else knows how, and most are unwilling even if they knew. I find that such giving is to receive; mudita, the joy of the joy of others. But I do not find this a thing most people understand; instead, it is labeled all manner of ugliness and ego and tossed aside as if so much garbage.
I have a wonderful garden made of so many such castaways; little pieces of myself returned with badly bruised leaves, torn petals, and broken stems. They grow easily and well, and do not seem to mind being handed to others; even as, most often, they return all too quickly; nursery duty is, it seems, a life’s work.
Sometimes, it makes me angry. But more often than not, it just makes me sad. I dream of little shoots finding nourishment in another garden; of being able to smile at their presence as I walk the neighborhood world. But the contradiction becomes apparent and soon, my particular blend of idealism will no longer smile for continuing to try and give things that find nothing but rejection. Not because I would like to stop doing it, but because, despite my idealism, I find I’m too human to be able to see those battered, broken things arriving again and again for restoration.
It’s all analogy, of course. Slivers of me forever needful of healing. I begin to understand that I cannot keep giving them at the cost of the additional effort to repair them. I have never begged nor stolen them from others, not under any guise or for any reason. I have, however, often held things given by others as roses and found them plastic mockeries or flimsy paper.
It is time to be done with it. This is, of course, me saying it to myself; making mantra until the sense of it sinks in and becomes part of me rather than a concept lingering around my mind. I am making a gift for myself; a final blossom of exceptional care and kindness. In time, I will give it to myself and when I do, be happy for knowing that this time, it will receive the nourishment it deserves.