by tashmcgill | May 7, 2017 | Friendship, Love & Marriage, Mind
He flung out his hand, asking for mine and grasped my wrist in a clumsy sort of embrace.
“You are requirements,” he said. “Don’t go.”
I had simply wondered out loud about leaving the party to go home now the celebrations were in full swing. It was a throwaway question, was I now surplus to requirements, could I go home?
I didn’t mean to be asking for permission, nor did I expect the bolt of acknowledgement that came from his words. He was a friend in need, on the constant precipice of emotional breakdown and I had capacity to meet his need for someone reliable and loyal.
In that moment, I was requirements even though I knew it wouldn’t or couldn’t last. It was a glimpse and reminder of everything this really wasn’t. I wasn’t really requirements, but the idea of me was.
I would come to see this as the summer we settled into one another. From that point forward, his uncertainty of my loyalty became concrete assurance and I was then on, unfaltering in my friendship and support. Later, I came to see this as both the beauty and the sadness of my life. An effortless ability to step into someone’s need and to fulfil their requirements regardless of my own.
The feel of his skin and shape of his shoulders under my fingers became as familiar as that of a child or brother. It was nothing to clasp his hand as we would pray, or to feel the heaviness of his head resting on my shoulder in a hug. It was an easy agreement between friends. In the long days of distress, I could answer his need, a glass of wine and listening ear, mostly.
Truthfully though, you might be requirements for a moment but eventually those requirements will change. Someone who is healing will not always need you in the same way they need you now. Open wounds need tending, but newly formed scar tissue is often best left alone, if you catch my drift.
Being requirements came with boundaries and limits. I gave out of an open hand, whatever my capacity was at the time but I couldn’t give with an open heart because while he needed me to meet requirements, he couldn’t meet mine.
The pieces he needed were still some of the best pieces of me and I could give them without cost but not without sacrifice.
Throwing a dinner party when significant birthday celebrations came around. Holding together a kid’s birthday party while arguments happened in the background. Babysitting at the last-minute or being any kind of company when the night is too long and dark. Laughter and an excuse to re-imagine and explore the world at the best restaurants, on short trips away. A steady, reliable and loyal comrade to be trusted in any kind of gathering or last-minute adventure – those requirements I could meet.
My requirements are quite different. People and friends meaning well have often probed the question, do I just need to be needed? Is that why I’m always the strong friend that people, particularly men, are drawn to until something better comes along?
I don’t need to be needed. I’m a helper but I don’t thrive on being needed. Sometimes a sense of people depending or expecting help from me is the fastest way to build barriers between us. I thrive on helping when I want to help.
Part of learning healthy boundaries as an adult has been choosing when and who to help, particularly when my help is wanted.
Because my requirement is to be wanted. Not a placeholder or simply the one who is available at the time, not taken for granted or a substitute until something better comes along but the one who is wanted.
When someone particularly wants my help or input, I am at my most vulnerable. When men (and women) who ‘need’ my friendship have come along, I have learned through heartache that to be ‘needed’ is not the same as being wanted. Requirements will change. He would have consumed me, as if I was water in the desert if I had not had my eyes wide open. People who are thirsty will do that to each other.
An Oasis for the Thirsty
I am sure I’m not the only one who has a story like this, where you are the one who does the heavy lifting in your relationships. You’re the best girlfriend of your male best friends or the guy your girlfriends all rely on for a man’s opinion. You’re the one whose friendship they can’t live without but really, they can. And I don’t want to be the fill-in girl. To be honest, people will take whatever of yourself you give them and treat you how you teach them to treat you. Sometimes, I feel like an oasis in the desert for the thirsty, but I’m always thirsty myself. We have made a mistaken, secret kind of holiness of being needed.
I’m learning (and still trying to practice) not mistaking vulnerability for intimacy and vice-versa. And somehow learn not to give of myself what they cannot give to me, especially in moments of my vulnerability. It is the loneliest kind of love, requiring self-discipline to temper affection, measure what you can give and withhold that which you do not wish to relinquish. But that is love in boundaries. And it sucks. I don’t believe for a second that we were meant to live in this measured, self-protecting way with each other. But in a world that has forgotten how to live wholeheartedly and honestly with each other, this is the best we have, navigating through the fog.
The scary truth is that being someone’s Girl Friday, someone’s requirements now, may yet be the best intimacy I ever know. So I’m still requirements, when I can be. Still wholehearted, as much as possible. And still wanting to be wanted some day, for someone’s requirements to be me, just me, broken and best.
by tashmcgill | Mar 23, 2016 | Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Relationships
I used to be sentimental about a lot of things, but I ran out of room in my heart and for keepsakes. Now, I only keep the most important things. I try to limit my sentimentality but it’s hard to put memories away, even when you no longer need them. We spend a lot of time making memories we don’t need. You only need to remember where you live when you are twelve while you are twelve. When you are 25 or 86, it matters less where you lived when you were 12, but where you live now.
By now I’ve learned what they don’t teach in school, but ought to. People and the unique connections we form with each other can be like seasons. Some pass and some always return. Some are life-long and with those people, I want to remember everything. Some people you meet and want to keep forever, to sear into memory each unique expression and turn of phrase; the way of walking and movement. How they enter a room and the sound of each sigh and laugh. Mostly, these are colours that bring stories to life and I want to remember each story of the most important people.
But whether it is transience, heartbreak, betrayal, injustice, death or simply the way the world turns from time to time; we are taught to hold nothing tightly; nothing is forever. People will come and go from your life but sometimes, taken by surprise, you will whisper to yourself the question of another, ‘Can I keep you?’
Can I keep you?
I remember the first time I met my friend Bethany. I’d known her husband for a couple of years but in meeting her, felt a kinship that was special. I found myself wondering after laughing together, will I get to keep her? ‘Can we always be friends?’ I whispered to myself. I store up all the memories of our visits together, because I never want to forget a moment of her magic and wonder in my life.
It’s like that with my nieces and nephews too; paying attention to remember the funny things they say and how they play, their favourite books. I want to keep them preserved in my mind from age 0 til .. well, forever.
All relationships change the brain – but most important are the intimate bonds that foster or fail us, altering the delicate circuits that shape memories, emotions and that ultimate souvenir, the self. Diane Ackerman
What does it mean to keep someone?
Of course, I never set out in knowing someone to say goodbye; but sometimes it is unavoidable. Time and space dictate a mathematical impossibility in maintaining the intimacy and hum of relationship with all those we meet. You have to make choices about who to keep and who to let go of. Sometimes people will choose to let go of you and all of this is acceptable, until you have no choice in letting go. The problem with dementia isn’t keeping the memories at first, but finding them. My stepfather is losing his ability to make new memories so now he only has what he has, when he can find them.
Maybe if we keep less of the unimportant memories, we’ll make it easier to find the important ones. One step further, maybe if I only make the memories I know will count, then perhaps I can save myself some unnecessary grief and hold on to the important things, giving all my attention to those.
I meet a lot of people. But I confess I do not catalogue them all or commit each one to memory. I listen to stories, I pay attention, I am present with you and sometimes that is enough. Sometimes it has to be enough but it leaves me with a choice about who to remember, who to give the precious space of memory to, and that is harder than you might think. Once in a while, I meet a person that is too exquisite and interesting and I hear that small voice whisper again, ‘Please can I keep you?’
What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories. George Eliot
Should I remember the way you said that, in case later it becomes important? Will I want to remember what that expression means? Should I make an effort to store away this particular feeling in case I want to one day say, this was the first time I knew I wanted to keep you. This was the first glass of wine I knew we would be friends. I am tired of collecting memories just in case; but I can’t help myself but make them.
Life would be simpler with caveats on how the end will come. If you could know when people would leave you or when you would need to leave people. You could administrate farewells and collect only the innocuous memories, the ones that bring no harm. No need then for memories that are so heavy, collecting too much weight in the mind or heart.
But a life of caveats leaves no room for surprise. No room to change the rules and I am, by nature, a rule changer. Not a breaker, as much as a changer. I like the flexibility to change the expectations. Who says some things are unforgivable or that things must go a certain way? Why must beginnings be dictated by their end, before a proper beginning is even begun?
Oh, it’s the weight of memory that we carry from the time before and the time before that. We forget to reach for the stars yet untouched. We neglect to imagine what is possible, what may yet be. We know what it’s like to let go of memories we made with the intention of keeping them forever.
But perhaps it’s perfectly acceptable to keep some memories forever, without keeping the people. Perhaps that one unforgettable season is worth holding on, no matter what happens.
I’ve never tried to block out the memories of the past, even though some are painful. I don’t understand people who hide from their past. Everything you live through helps to make you the person you are now. Sophia Loren
When I see you now
there is room in my eyes to remember your eyes.
I have space under my fingertips
to remember the feel of your skin.
I remember now, the feeling expanding within
my chest cage is not sadness but space
– when did lightness become so heavy?
Oh, but it’s you, like an anchor within me.
An anchor in space
As light as the moon
Can we turn the moon upside down
Change the weight of gravity
Leaving nothing as it was
A star map to find everything again
When I see you now
there is room in my eyes to remember your eyes
I have space under my fingertips
I am only anchored to the sky
feet gently dangling on the earth
rewriting the stars.
by tashmcgill | Feb 13, 2016 | Friendship, Love & Marriage, Mind
One morning last year, I woke from a dream and my head was full of thought; hanging like a wave waiting to crest for some time. The kind of billowy thoughts that are undefined; really more of a feeling. It was heavy and I searched to define it until I remembered the word; melancholy.
On this particular morning, I struggled to find reason for my melancholy. I was in the middle of an adventure overseas, I was surrounded with friends and I was drinking whiskey, not gin. I was not unhappy. I was content.
I made coffee and sat at my favourite window in a house I love. The sun was warm on my back and I was without obligation but to embrace the moment. Still my heart would not quicken and I could not lift my soul. And I remembered then; this is the Lonely. There was something within me longing to be heard; but the one to hear was not with me.
So I let it sit, let it dwell with me for the day. Loneliness becomes a more tolerable companion as soon as you acknowledge its presence, I’ve found. I let others assume the reason for my quiet reticence that day and then in the evening, alone in the quietness of my room, I said to the Lonely, ‘Thank you for today and good night.’
The Lonely wished me a clear night of sleeping and gently exited the room. What happened so that when I woke, the Lonely was no longer with me?
What the Lonely Is Trying To Tell Us.
Scientists speculate the human brain contains over 100 billion nerves, communicating complex messages. These nerves are responsible for communicating pain, injury and harm. But the soul, the spirit has no such system – or at least, not one so clearly defined or as understandable as neurons. So the intangible self must find ways of alerting us to when something is wrong with our spirit.
I believe that much of what we feel, sense and experience in life, good and bad – is part of the complex communication between the articulate mind and the intangible, voiceless soul. When change is required, when change is happening, when something good or when something bad is emerging – feelings emerge to guide us down the way.
The challenge is that we confuse these feelings for being a ‘state’ rather than a message. A message is something to hear and respond to; a state is something you have to morph from. The Lonely is trying to tell us something and the lonely won’t go away until it’s been heard.
I was talking with a friend who is recovering from a relationship breakup, the real kind where your whole being is redefined in moments. He spoke with sadness and tenderness about the emerging loneliness in his life and I witnessed many of the ways he tried to change his state of being. And this week, I’ve heard the same from many others as Valentine’s Day approaches.
“If I can just find plans for the weekend, I won’t be lonely.”
“So long as I’m with friends on Valentines Day, I’ll be ok and not think about it.”
“I’m not going to be alone, I am going to find a new relationship.”
Judge a person by their questions, not their answers.
That morning, I woke and encountered melancholy and realised my soul was trying to send me a message.
“Why are you here today, while I am in the company of so many friends? What are you trying to tell me?”
I asked the Lonely what it was saying.
Over the years, the Lonely has visited me before along with Sadness, Frustration, Hopelessness. At other times, Joy, Anticipation, Delight and Contentment have visited me too. But for today, here’s what I’ve learned the Lonely is trying to tell me.
I might be isolated. With people or alone, but either way disconnected. Usually it’s when my thoughts have traveled inward and haven’t been expressed. I have something that ought to be shared with someone but I haven’t shared it.
I might feel invisible or unnoticed in a crowd. This is the plague of the third-wheel, the calamity of the social single. It’s not always, but sometimes you feel you could be lost from the moment without people noticing you were gone.
I am lacking in intimacy. A thousand people to small talk with but no-one to understand the bitter-sweet irony of a moment or a glimpse of something we’ve seen before. An absence of shared memory or history. Often, loneliness exists in the midst of our dearest friendships and relationships because we’ve fallen into the habit of being with someone without being present to that person.
I am not engaged. For human beings, Bored and Lonely are sometimes telling us the same thing. We’re not engaged in the present. With the ones in front of us or with what might be discovered in front of us. We see things as they appear to be. We assume the blue hat is on the hook by the laundry door because it is so frequently there we forget to look for it. We stop noticing the small changes in the pattern of what we see everyday.
I am feeling uncomfortable or in a new environment. I long for something familiar. I long for security.
I feel Other and insecure. I feel alone and unlike anyone else. I am without a sense of home in this moment.
Sometimes I am just longing. Loneliness tells me my body needs touch. I need the embrace of another, the warmth of human skin and to share the breath of life. I need closeness and for my pleasure receptors to be firing. I need to respond and be responded to. That may not mean sex and sometimes it might. Loneliness reminds me that my body, mind and spirit are connected. Two cannot carry the load of three endlessly.
“Why are you here today, while I am in the company of so many friends? What are you trying to tell me?”
In the simplest of forms, loneliness is most often telling us that we need interaction and engagement with other human beings. The burden is that we may not always be able to dictate what kind of interaction we have. But be disciplined and choose which desire to feed.
Which do you feed?
There is a Cherokee story about a boy and his grandfather. The grandfather explains there are two wolves in battle within us; one that is good and represents hope and peace. The other evil and represents anger, sorrow and ego. The boy asks his grandfather which wolf wins and the old man answers, ‘The one you feed’.
When we assess data and information; we have to be careful to not let our assumptions lead to the wrong conclusion. You can find evidence for nearly any hypothesis, depending on the question you ask. So, if you assume that loneliness is a state and you must simply wait until circumstances change so that you are no longer lonely – you are using the wrong data. You have to be careful not to feed your loneliness based on the incorrect data.
But wait about on Valentine’s Day? Or family holidays? Similarly, it is incorrect to assume that a single form of interaction might appease the loneliness or need you have. It is madness to assume that any single relationship can satisfy the needs of a human being. We are complex and multifaceted creatures with maddeningly simple and complex needs. When loneliness enters your life, it’s not because you are single or unhappy in your marriage. It’s because your mind and body is trying to tell you something. When you respond to the message, things will change. Respond to the message first and then deal with the circumstances later.
I will not be any more or less lonely simply because I might one day share my Lonely with another. They will not be able to banish the lonely, but they may share it.
Today, I am single but that’s irrelevant. I am a person who is connected, engaged, present, intimate with a few, friendly with many. I can reach out for a hug when I need it or caress the cheek of a friend. I could take a lover or I could find a mate. But I will not be any more or less lonely simply because I might one day share my Lonely with another. They will not be able to banish the lonely, but they may share it.
You can hear me this Sunday night (February 14, 2016) talking about loneliness on NewstalkZB with Sam Bloore from 6 – 7.30pm.
by tashmcgill | Dec 1, 2015 | Community, Culture & Ideas, Friendship, Relationships
A year ago and a week ago, I passed under this bridge in a traffic jam, stuck again on Interstate 65. This piece of highway is a constant in my life as I travel between places and people I know.
I was stuck metaphorically too, stuck in a dream of a dream. The bridge is just a symbol, a lot of water has passed under this bridge since then. 372 days that see me further from one dream but closer to another. I don’t know what that dream is, but it must be a dream because it’s not yet real.
I think I must have grown up some but there’s a post-it note stuck to my computer screen that says “Everything I ever let go of had claw marks in it”, and it’s certainly true for me. I can feel the tingling in my fingertips. How much I want to hold to something, for something to be as permanent or certain as this bridge. I want to held on to; to be permanent and certain myself.
I’ve been learning you can’t hold on to what’s not real or permanent. You can’t hold on to what’s not holding you. Lorem Ipsum has no permanent home, just like a pipiwhararoa it flies from nest to nest looking for a place to call its own. No one holds on to Lorem Ipsum either.
Lorem Ipsum.
You probably recognize the phrase. If you’ve ever worked in design, printing, had to produce marketing materials or a website there’s a good chance you’ve seen this text. It’s ancient Latin from “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book on the theory of ethics was popular with emerging humanist thinkers during the Renaissance so as printing technology emerged during this era, it’s no surprise that a collection of paragraphs from this text was used as dummy text to review typefaces.
Placeholder text is designed to look close enough to the real thing that it becomes invisible to the viewer. Originally so that a printer and publisher might agree the layout of the text or the choice of typeface on a page. Now, Lorem Ipsum is often used to fill out the design frames and suggest where text is required in marketing collateral and digital publishing.
A placeholder is used to fill space but leave no lasting impression. It looks and feels real but carries no meaning. It is yet it does not endure. Lorem Ipsum has survived for 5 centuries now only ever being useful for a moment, to fill the space before it is replaced.
I am not Lorem Ipsum, neither are you.
It’s a shame that some things you only learn after the fact. You learn the rock is slippery as soon as your foot starts sliding. You realise you’ve been Lorem Ipsum when someone starts seeing straight past you. You realise you’ve had all the good intentions in the world, but your friendship has carried no meaning, your words have floated off like feathers in the sky. When Lorem Ipsum is replaced with words you attribute meaning to – you no longer need the Lorem Ipsum.
I love words. And these words meant something to Cicero, to the great Renaissance philosophers and ethicists. Sentences constructed with intention just like I have been made with a meaning greater than the sum of my syllables – Lorem Ipsum is the real thing, not a dream. You have forgotten that I once, had meaning too.
Lorem Ipsum in the Debris.
I do believe some relationships are seasonal. And especially friendship can be deceptive, appearing mutual when both parties have different expectations and agendas. My shared stories and experiences create a narrative that we all own, my stories shared become your own and vice versa. We give meaning to each other but only if we mean it.
But no person should ever be Lorem Ipsum for another. We must be able to look each other in the eye and keep our promises – I see you, you can see me. If we treat each other like placeholders til something better comes along – we strip meaning from beauty and destroy our shared narratives. We destroy each other and ourselves.
Yes, we do this from time to time – we fill our world with those who are available to us although they do not always fulfil us. We allow ourselves to feel useful and meaningful. Of course, we do this because loneliness is a hungry wolf at the door. But once we start to feed the wolf on hollow bread, we cannot keep him from the door. Resist. Resist. Commit yourself to the meaning of those you share your stories with. And therefore choose carefully whom you love.
There is a shallow darkness in anyone that can live in such a way, to not know the ancient, wise, tenacious gift they hold in the palm of their hand. It implies an unknowing of themselves, because authenticity demands authenticity.
The storm change comes along and swept up in the river swell you become the debris on the bank. The difference between a seasonal transition in relationships and being Lorem Ipsum, is acknowledgement of the season change, thank you and goodbye. Without it, gasping for air and wondering how you missed the signs, you shirk off your sinking expectations and swim for shore.
Of course, you can choose not to become the debris. We all get caught out from time to time; not realising that while we laid out our words in perfect syntax, our Latin went unrecognised by the other. For being fooled into thinking my narrative was true, I have learned even more what authenticity looks like. I’ve realised even though people can hurt you by treating you like a spacefiller – I can free myself in a minute by letting go.
Choose not to hold on to people who don’t want to hold you back. Workplace comraderie, friendship on any scale, lovers, distant family – choose not to hold on to anything but the present moment and those who are willing to hold you. Even then, choose wisely from those who would hold your precious meaning in their hands. Letting go can feel like losing something until you remember the best thing you had in that friendship was what you made it, with your heart, your compassion, your love and soul. Even your hopes and expectations of the other were a good kind of dream. So you walk away losing nothing, because you still have yourself. You are the carrier of your meaning.
You have your purpose, becoming clearer in the days and by dream at night, a new old kind of dream. Instead of fighting the current below the bridge, you are now given the chance to cross it; a change in every direction – first up, then East instead of South and with a much larger view to the world. Remember your meaning.
You are a gift to the world, often unopened by many who drift by you but still valuable. An ancient treasure hidden in a field, a pearl inside a gnarly shell, a fragment of beauty that does not fade, an eternal force more precious than rubies. Your meaning is not taken from you by those who do not comprehend you. Perhaps they have not imagined you yet but still you are.
Cicero’s Lorem Ipsum (a fragment).
“But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?”
“On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains.”
by tashmcgill | Nov 30, 2015 | Community, Friendship, Relationships
You love fewer people than you think you do. And, if you need permission to care less diligently about some, in order to love others better – this is it. Feel free to hit delete.
I mean, of course, you’re kind and warm, welcoming and enthusiastic about lots of people when you encounter them in the street or with mutual friends. You’re never not gracious and friendly; making small talk while circulating the room. You listen to stories and remember to think good thoughts for those who are suffering and say a prayer if you are so inclined.
So, yes – you do care about people, in a general way of speaking. You care, in a general, non-practitioner sense. You care with the capacity that you have. You pay attention to your Facebook news feed. But you do not really love that many specific people.
Read that sentence twice. Follow the emphasis.
You do not really love that many specific, individual people.
You do not really love that many specific, individual people.
And that’s ok. In fact, it’s probably good for you. Indeed, I’m giving you permission, I’m asking you to consider loving fewer people, better. Let Love take on a heavier, more intentional meaning than when you talk about ice-cream or potato chips.
Our world is saturated with connection that lacks intimacy. Week after week, people tell me how brave and vulnerable I must be to write how I do on this blog or in social media. I share my reflections on an inner life and strangers halfway around the world are moved. I am moved because they are. I feel a sense of purpose in creating meaning for others. But I am not the meaning.
You see, I care about the people who read and engage with my words. I care that they are well, moving towards wholeness, being themselves, discovering bravery in intimacy and courage to use their own voices. I care, but I do not love you.
That’s ok. You shouldn’t need me to love you and you probably don’t. But some of us – the only care we receive is what comes back through those social media filters.
I can only truly love maybe 20 people or so. There are another 30 or so I love very much. There are another 30 – 40 beyond that I would feel their absence keenly from my world and be rocked by their tragedies. But I am an anomaly and almost none of those people experience my love through social media.
Most people only have room for 6 – 8 significant intimate connections outside their immediate family. That’s how many people you can truly love, engage and maintain intimacy with. I have a small family, I figure I get some extra numbers. I’m an extrovert, a writer and speaker. Part of my job is to connect with people. It’s almost effortless to collect people along the way and genuinely care about those interactions and outcomes. In the moment, when you’re there. And conceptually, afterward – even for a long time.
Anyone who lives in the present moment will find themselves well-connected to all manner of people; because we are able to give and receive in the moment of ourselves and others.
That’s life-giving, fulfilling and beautiful. It is the nature of Love when we are swept up in its outpouring to engage with others. It may be intimate for a moment but it is not lifelong.
With the exception of marriage (I still believe), our relationships are permitted to be seasonal. Not every fleeting connection was meant to last forever, but nowadays we accumulate relationships the same way people collect baseball cards. There’s always room for one more and always a new player joining the team. How are we ever meant to figure out the rules of engagement for every connection we make? How are we ever to find the time or the energy for all these connections.
Don’t get me wrong. Caring for people is great. Whenever you are able, care for someone. Caring is good and creates emotional connection, but Love will demand action too. We need to pare back our tribes so we can really care. To go deep again, not wide.
Love turns up in the middle of the night to a three word text message. Love is often invisible on Facebook, as a friend of mine reminded me. Caring for someone can happen in a moment; Love that follows through every promise grows over time. It’s a different kind of investment. You will learn this in the cruelest way when you realise someone you thought loved you, only cared. Then you will know what it is; to need to know the difference in how you love and how you are loved.
Loving some people and caring for others is kinda healthy. The ability to make connections deeper than Sunday coffee conversations and the ability to prioritize where you invest. More than checking Facebook status updates.
The trouble with navigating relationships in a world dominated by constant connection with people through social media, text and email – is that sometimes the ones you truly love are not the ones that dominate your time or your filters. Sometimes people get waylaid in their expectations and they want more Love than Care.
They forget that a Facebook or Instagram like
is not as weighty as a text message
which is not as weighty as an email
which is not as weighty as a phone call
and is not as weighty as your physical presence
when it comes to Love
because Love will always come with action.
Caring is enough, if caring is what I have to offer. But caring cannot get in the way of Love.
Hit Delete.
Facebook is an audience. A collection of people whom we’ve connected with. But my people, the people I love find themselves around my fireplace. The people I love eat my food. Still, the pressure builds to stay on top of triumph and tragedy through words and pictures on a dozen different channels. We love knowledge and some (most) are naturally curious. We love to discover what’s hidden or unknown. But a hundred connections that love real love and intimacy will never equate to the truth and power of being really known by a friend you love. Who hopefully loves you back. Those are sacred spaces, so you can’t have them or share them with all those people. No one has enough spirit for that. Except maybe Oprah. And even then, not even Oprah. She knows.
The power of real intimacy with a real person in comparison to the influence and energy of an audience. Neither is better, but they have different purposes and meaning in our lives.
So maybe you need permission to let some people go. To hit delete from your Facebook friends list, or eliminate the noise from people you care about to focus on the people you love. Delete pointless contacts from your phone. If you’ll never call them, don’t keep their number. Filter out the needless information and curiosities that fill up your day/mind/thoughts and open your spirit again to deep Love. If you are really brave, filter your little black book of calendar engagements too.
Delete me, if you need to. I get it. I care about you too and I want you to do a better job of loving the ones you Love. I want the same thing. You’ve got permission to gather yourself back from the hundreds of little connections draining your battery and making obstacles for true love.
by tashmcgill | Aug 10, 2015 | Friendship, Love & Marriage
I have something to tell you but first I must give you two definitions. Be patient with me, but come along with me to this place.
Love is problematic to define these days. A single word has been stretched through the ages to encompass many things that are not love. We have come to know love as a feeling, as many feelings. Feelings of acceptance, belonging, desire, companionship, friendship, trust, fulfilment, lust. Many of these feelings are about the Self, the Ego. In it’s most basic human habit, pursuit of love is an egocentric, the language of love is a lazy lens through which we seek meaning. We hope to satisfy our inner turmoil through external means. As if love applied externally, from outside of us, will heal our wounds and complete our emptiness.
Here is what I believe about Truth. Truth is a way of being and seeing in the world. Truth is not seeing things as they are, the definition of black or white, good or bad Truth and therefore freedom to live truly is not found in determining what is right or wrong. Which is why Truth leads to Truest Love, the kind of love that sees the possibility of hope and redemption in all things alongside the darkness. Truth lives in a world that is both good and bad, redeemable and hopeless.
Truth is bigger than us. Sometimes we forget Love can be too but we tend to reduce it to feelings; a transaction record of good and bad feelings that we keep within us. We try to make Love fit the emptiness we feel inside when perhaps we could fill that space with truthful things instead.
I am angry with you, I am happy about this. I feel conflicted in this belief. I am not sure about this situation. I am confused. I am undecided. I have decided and you will not like my decision.
This basic kind of love almost always involves a transaction with another person or people. “I felt loved because of what you said or did. Because of how you touched me or laughed at me, I felt secure, weak, sad, rejected, loved, desired.” Truth brings us back to self and the universe. Who am I? Who are you?
Truth looks inwardly to express something external into the world. Love searches in the world for something that will answer the internal. If you pursue Truth, you will always have a gift to offer the smallest or largest gathering of humans, because you can live outside of your own need.
So to the crux of it: I wrote here that I was giving something up – trying to determine the What-Is, What-Isn’t and What-If.
I have not given up on Love, but I have given Love up. I have given up Love for Truth. Not to give up on Love itself, but to give up the chasing of it. I am willing to embrace a life that does not rise or fall or find it’s definition in the way I am loved or find love in relationships with people. I am learning that accepting myself wholly is a most worthy endeavour, despite what feels uncomfortable and risky. Where I fear loss, I remind myself that being fully alive in this wondrous body and mind is a glorious pursuit. I am not bitter, I am not defeated nor deflated, I am not fatally pessimistic. I see a different type of future, where I, loving Truth most of all, might find more truthful love in any variety of expressions.
Truth is already waiting for me, within my grasp and with a sustaining, life-giving, soul-filling pulse. If I do not choose Truth, I might accidentally let go of it to chase Love and for what? Truest love settles within me and longs to be sought out, if I would just embrace Truth as a way of living and let her be revealed. She who is I.
Strong, idealistic, creative, sarcastic, witty, playful, sexual and sensual, a dreamer and doer, demanding and deeply emotional: this is just the surface of truth in my life. Lonely, brave, terrified and sometimes irrational, I am always well-intentioned and I try to demonstrate Love in my actions even when my words are firm and furious. I am passion in flesh and blood, letting nothing from my grasp without a fight if I desire it. And I desire many things. I desire. I am desire.
Yes, I have chosen Truth over Love and it has done nothing for my loneliness. But living in Truth is also accepting no external force can calm the inner turmoil. Not even your idea of God can resolve that which is unresolved within you if you cannot accept Truthfulness as a way of living. To choose Truth is no miracle cure for loneliness. Truth is key to embracing your loneliness.
Love promises the Ego there is comfort, security and belonging in being known.
Let me be explicitly clear: the more time you spend chasing this kind of love, the hungrier you’ll be. No one will ever love you hard enough, deep enough, true, rich, kind or fast enough. It will never be enough.
Truth tells you there will always be loneliness within your life, that grows and shrinks accordingly to your chasing of Love.
Truth will help you accept rejection and love deeply in the midst of your own sorrow, celebrating in times of sadness and of joy because Truth is always bigger than us and invites us into a bigger way of living.
Truth has always been the gift I have to offer, so I could not be more at home with myself than to give all else up to embrace it fully, and therefore myself.
Do you struggle to forgive simply through loving someone enough? Love is not the path to forgiveness. Truth is the path to forgiveness because the transaction is not based on putting things to rights but rather telling the truth of what is and what might be; side by side.
Do you struggle to show people your true self for fear of rejection or losing relationships? You require Truth to become fully yourself. Choosing not to live out of complete truth for fear of losing relationship, status or influence is a Catch-22 that quickly traps you into people-pleasing. It’s as if you begin to reject your true self so others won’t.
Do you wrestle with loneliness? Truth will set you free to embrace and understand your loneliness, to live with it rather than against it.
Yes, I have chosen Truth over Love and it has done nothing for my loneliness. But living in Truth is also accepting no external force can calm the inner turmoil. Not even your idea of God can resolve that which is unresolved within you if you cannot accept Truthfulness as a way of living.
So I have given Love up for Truth in order to tell you the truth. To tell myself the truth. To live truthfully in the world. Maybe I will also encounter Love along the way, but I will most certainly live in Truest Love.
