At every occasion Ill be ready for a funeral...
Expectations. The more I experience, the easier it becomes for me to see what a huge role expectations play in our lives. They dictate the way we enter any given situation. They are a preemptive determinate of how we will react to whatever comes about. And each new thing we encounter shapes our expectations for the next, a system of tumbling dominoes that becomes our experiences, our memories, and in many ways, who we are.
A long time ago I settled on the fact that the best way to protect yourself is to have no expectations at all. Expect nothing and you will be ready for anything. Hope for nothing and remain blissfully untouched by failure or let down. Even as I write these statements that point to the obvious flaws in this theory, I have a hard time not seeing the merit in a philosophy that would somehow soften the impact of the hurt and disappointment that we will inevitably face.
But as I have been attempting to hash out what such a thing might really look like, I realized something about my own expectations. After losing Quinton, out of sheer emotional necessity, I had to find a way to protect myself from feeling any more pain. I thought that losing expectations was the answer. Yet, I am just coming to realize that my expectations were not gone, they had merely changed. One of my favorite songs says "at every occasion Ill be ready for a funeral". Having experienced a loss worse than anything I could have imagined brought me to a place of expecting the worst in every situation. Somehow expecting the hurt became my protection. Even still, I see the repercussions of those expectations in me now. The dominoes have lead me on a path that makes it hard for me to imagine anything ever working out. I have spent two years expecting the funeral in every occasion.
I heard this said about people that have experienced great loss... "In staring down death every day, we are forced to know that life, every minute, is borrowed time. And each person we let ourselves care about is just one more loss somewhere down the line". I don't want to keep measuring my life in loss. The thought of losing someone else I love is more than I can bare. But, I am also losing a great deal by never moving past my fear of losing someone else. Someone I respect told me that the opposite of fear is not courage, it is love. I want to love. And I want to find a way to love that supersedes expectations, good or bad. A love that carries on despite hurt or disappointment and that overcomes the fear of loss. I suppose that is a rather lofty expectation in and of itself, but I hope, I expect that it is possible. And one day, perhaps not so far off, there may be an occasion that I wont be waiting for the funeral, I will simply join in the celebration.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Friday, February 20, 2009
4... 3... 2... 1... 3/4... 2/3...
Letting go. Its probably the one inevitable task of life that I am worst at. Some would call it my hill to die on. I call it practically impossible.
There is something about the motion of life, the coming and going of people and circumstances that makes letting go so necessary. Yet, when it comes to people in particular, I cannot seem to master the art of letting go. This is, in part, the reason that I tend to shy away from attachment if at all possible. My limited attachments are more or less... for better or worse... permanent. I understand the necessity and feel the strain of intimacies that have run their course. But I just cant seem to relay the message of moving on to my heart... at least not entirely.
Why? I think its a combination of many things. One is the notion that if I keep a piece of someone I care about in my heart, if I hold that part of them with me, they will somehow remain safe. Whether they are in a different state or a different country, their place in me makes me feel as though they cannot be lost. I think another is my own desire to be held onto. Perhaps I havent lived long enough to have any true wisdom about this life, but from what I can make of it, the only thing we have that really matters is each other. If I have made no difference to the people I love, if I myself am easy to let go of, then what have I really done? So maybe I hold onto people in the way I hope they will hold onto me. The way I feel everyone deserves to be held onto.
Its these thoughts and feelings intermingled with the faces of those that have come and gone... some who have walked away, some whose lives have taken them away, and some who are gone forever that make me really terrible at letting go. And Im not sure what to make of that. Maybe as you grow older it grows easier. Maybe it never gets easier... maybe thats ok. For me, thats ok.
There is something about the motion of life, the coming and going of people and circumstances that makes letting go so necessary. Yet, when it comes to people in particular, I cannot seem to master the art of letting go. This is, in part, the reason that I tend to shy away from attachment if at all possible. My limited attachments are more or less... for better or worse... permanent. I understand the necessity and feel the strain of intimacies that have run their course. But I just cant seem to relay the message of moving on to my heart... at least not entirely.
Why? I think its a combination of many things. One is the notion that if I keep a piece of someone I care about in my heart, if I hold that part of them with me, they will somehow remain safe. Whether they are in a different state or a different country, their place in me makes me feel as though they cannot be lost. I think another is my own desire to be held onto. Perhaps I havent lived long enough to have any true wisdom about this life, but from what I can make of it, the only thing we have that really matters is each other. If I have made no difference to the people I love, if I myself am easy to let go of, then what have I really done? So maybe I hold onto people in the way I hope they will hold onto me. The way I feel everyone deserves to be held onto.
Its these thoughts and feelings intermingled with the faces of those that have come and gone... some who have walked away, some whose lives have taken them away, and some who are gone forever that make me really terrible at letting go. And Im not sure what to make of that. Maybe as you grow older it grows easier. Maybe it never gets easier... maybe thats ok. For me, thats ok.
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