Category: Writing

It is a funny thing growing old(er).  This requisite activity called life has convinced me of one thing with every passing moment; and, it is this: with every passing moment I grow ever more certain I know less than the moment before.

As of today the count-down to my financial resolution to my last “adventure in love” has reached its final tick and tock.  First emotional, next friendship then legal and now financial ties been severed: there is nothing left but memories to reflect upon.  I look back on those years that have lapsed by from when I first met Erica to now when I no longer know who she is other than as a shadow cast under the noonday sun of my waking mind.  In a similar manner of unknowing her, I realize that I barely recognize myself but in a backward sort of way.  In this I mean I think I know more of who I am than I did those few years ago when I started this all; but, whereas then I was certain I knew myself and my life at the time I met her, now I know I know nothing.  Even in discovering I have zero grasp of the world, others, or myself, I believe I know myself with a deeper sense of certainty by the sheer fact that I know I know little of great import other than that I know nothing — and that is maybe the only “something” worth knowing.

When Erica showed me through herself the consequence of not forgiving, she gave me the greatest gift ever: the courage to turn the key to the door that lead to me forgiving myself.  And when I opened that door I could only but step through and fall from the heights of ego that led me astray.  Plummet I did, but instead of crashing I instead found myself floating in a piece of sky that resembles something like a peace, a joy that comes from knowing that life is an illusion.  I am an illusion.  Illusions are two-way.  I cannot impact the world around me, but equally there is nothing more that can touch me than what I allow to touch me .  If I am mere illusion–a concoction of culture, shared histories, external perceptions and a universe beyond my control–then I also learned my ego serves no purposes than to try to–unsuccessfully, I might add–manipulate and control a universe beyond my influence.  At least for myself, I came to realize I lived in my head, not through my heart.  And what I mean by this is that I came to appreciate I can no longer think of the next moment, but only embrace this very moment.  And because this moment in its entirety in its raw form is infinitely larger than my intellectual capacities then the only thing left me was to open myself up to this moment.  Where intellect drowned me in details, I discovered that surrendering myself to that ephemeral thing we call love allowed me to become buoyant in the very flow and ebb of this moment.

I babble; it is late.

I regret nothing.  I am honored to have loved and still love and cherish Erica albeit in a different capacity now than then.  I was honored then as I am now to have been married to her, too.  And without a bit of irony or sarcasm, I am equally happy to have been divorced by her.  It is maybe with a simple matter of anthropic principle at play, this has been my path with her.

With a frankness that maybe hallmarks this entry as one of my own, I confess I still have my fears for the road ahead of me.  I fear being alone for the rest of my life even if I am not afraid to move forward alone.  It is a strange, subtle, sublime this road I have been on thus far.  None of it I would have foreseen so few short years ago when I thought I would die old with Erica–a life lived well and lovingly with a lovely person.  And I will–but with me.

As with so much I knew I was right but not in the way I imagined:

ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα

A very dear friend of mine recently commented on my Facebook about a Tweet I recently posted.  The comment itself included a statement trying to clarify his “(c)omment on this story (my tweet) of unrequited love.”  And it is to this “unrequited love” that induced in me thoughts of whether this (unrequited love) is a good thing, a bad thing, an indifferent thing, or even a meaningful thing.  First, the below is only tangentially, at best, a response to my friend’s comment.  As such I am neither trying to refute or otherwise repudiate his statements.  Nor am I, per se, trying to persuade anyone of my position; I am merely trying to express, inform and possibly “think out-loud”, as it were, my own cogitations.

The word, unrequited, at least denotationally is a rather straight-forward one of:

unrequited |ˌənriˈkwītid| adjective; (of a feeling, esp. love) not returned or rewarded.

However, there is an interesting thing when we turn to its connotational form.  I have no specific reference other than to draw from myself, but when I hear the words “unrequited love” it brings to mind a tragedy for at least one party.  How can it not when so much of the common canon of love speaks to being loved?

If you wished to be loved, love.” – Seneca, Roman philosopher

If this is true then unrequited love implies a sense of pointlessness.  Unrequited love bumps up along infatuation in so much that it only requires one person to feel something, and in so much that the two do touch they share a mutual connoted sense of futility.

If we remove for a second that love must be returned in order to be rewarded, then unrequited love merely denotes rather plainly and factually that the love is unidirectional.  However, if we argue as Seneca does, then we might argue that love is driven by a simultaneous connection of affections; that love is bi-directional.   While there is an obvious emotional attachment to requited (reciprocated) love, I do not agree that love requires reciprocation to be meaningful or worthy of consideration.

To get at what I mean by this, let me side-step to one of the greatest sources of suffering in the world: expectations we levy both on ourselves and others.  This, of course, is not something novel but has a long, deep discourse in Buddhism.  Whenever we love with the understanding that the target of our affections also love us in return we are levying unduly an expectation on them.  Namely, we form our love upon a condition: if you love me then I will love you.  Or worse, the conditional becomes an imperative: I love you therefore you should (must!) love me.  Both of these propositions are, to me, wholely inappropriate and therefore more so woefully inadequate to qualify as anything approaching meaningful (selfless) love.

At some perfunctory level I appreciate the sentiment of Seneca: the reward for loving others is to be loved in return–give love first before we receive love second.  It is sanguine sentiment, and I believe it is better to see Seneca speaking to acts of selflessness than to the nature of love itself, though.  To wit, for me love should always be unidirectional, starting from myself and extending outward to all other peoples.  A person who hates me is still a person I love.  A person who loves me is a person I love. I do not love them for any other reason than that I love them–on my terms and without expectation of reciprocation or benefit.

While not central to my current thesis, I might add that when love is returned I believe that a “state change” occurs.  It moves from an internal manifestation to an external one, from a (mere) potential to a (substantial) kinetic.  This state change is a powerful one; so much so that it is what I consider “fate” is all about: two persons intersecting in space and time and consciously deciding to love each other.  Regardless, the absence of this state change does in no way dilute love in its internal (unrequited) form.  Yes; I love another person.  Yes; it is not reciprocated: it is unrequited.  These are facts.

But these facts bely the nature of my love and the state of my mind.  I levy no expectations on how this love is returned let alone whether it is returned at all.  Success, as it were, is not predicated on whether they love me.  I do not need them to love me in order for me to love them.  And yes, it is more than likely–almost guaranteed–that they will never love me in the fashion I love them.  But I do need to love them in order that I love myself: because the love I have for them is tied up as an expression of who I am–it is nothing more nor nothing less than this.  To re-iterate, I love a person–this person–as much for who they are not as for who they are.  Which is to say, if they do not love me then I love them for that, too.  Love is not an action with an outcome, its success is not predicated on the laws of causality–of cause and effect and of an outcome external to itself.  Love is a state of being, an emotion, and it is itself justification for itself.  I love.  It is enough.

Some analogies have a way of sticking with you even as you forget them, only to remember them anew years (even decades) later.

I love sailing even though I am not a sailor. I neither own a sailboat nor have I been on a sailboat more than a dozen times in my life. Even so, I believe in my heart beats a sailor. In the first moments I first boarded I felt something–someone–calling me. In those first steps onto the boat I was no longer There, I was Here. And Here I was not alone. But I only discovered who–Her–when I finally laid my hand on Her. It was only at the moment contact with the till–Her till–that I understand what She was trying to say to me. I felt Her. I heard Her. I even tasted Her. But I also instantly understood Her. As I stood there my eyes extended past Her bow and I felt the world dissolve itself into its primordial forms: Wind and Water and Sky; and, She and I were center to these three elements. I knew then that I loved Her more than anything before or after.

You do not simply make love to Her; She makes love to you on Her terms and Her time. And you must be content with that. She is always both before you and above you. She will talk to you in tight, crisp snaps of Her sails. She neither compromises herself to lay listless to the norms, nor play rogue by bullying Her way into the onrushing crowds. She leans into World and communicates Her contentment. If you are too shy, asking too little of Her then She pouts in deflated flamboyance. If you ignore Her limits which She always knows better than you, then She beckons to you to relent; a defiant shove of Her tiller. And when you find yourself flying along with Her, She holds your hand firmly, resolutely while Wind sings with Her their joy to be one with you.

But I also learned that She never goes directly to her destination along the simplest nor straightest path. Wind is of its own mind and so both are entangled in a weave across and through each other. You can only point for but a little awhile on any given course till you need to tack back. At any one moment, if anyone were to project forward your destination based where you were aimed they would be wrong; you never go with Her where you are aimed, for where you are headed is always somewhere else.

So is Life–my life. Now on my distant horizon rests solidly a lone, green Cedar Tree upon Snowy Mountain, red Sky of liberation descending into the reddish waters. It is where I am aimed, for I follow my love to Her. I follow my love with Her. But it is worth repeating: it is for now only where I am aimed; I know not where I am headed. But wherever I am headed I do I love Her. Always Her.

Always.