On Love and numbness....

Love Rests on no foundation,
It is an endless ocean,
with no beginning or end,
Imagine,
A suspended ocean,
riding on a cushion of ancient secrets,
All souls have drowned in it,
and now dwell there.
One drop of that ocean is hope,
and the rest is fear.

-Jelaluddin Rumi

This is my all time favorite Rumi poem. Tonight Colleen and I went out for a movie and some food and we spent about an hour trying to figure out if all relationships that existed in the world between Man and Woman were rife with a battle of the sexes or if people of each sex could ever rise above these silly excuses and respect one another for a change. Both of us are by no means feminists, in fact we consider ourselves fairly traditional in that sense, and smart, sensible, independent, etc. With that said....

This is what this blog will be about: In the past few days I have been witness to SO MANY unhappy relationships or relationships that have become numb. No one wants this, yet so many people who were at once in love end up aquiescing to a world of pre-shrunk desires and to me this is self betrayal! Isn't it a little depressing to think we're somehow incapable of inventing forms of emotional life based on anything other than subjugation???

Look, I'm not without faith, I'm just cautious and skeptical because of what I've witnessed, people struggling, sometimes blindly, against the fallout of their pretenses or delusions. Sometimes the results can be quite tragic, they've even been tragic for me, but I'm certainly not giving up. The decisions I've made with those I've loved have had reasons to back them and I think this was a worthy struggle. I just get mad that we feel we've got to invest so much in one another and make it fately fragile because we don't understand how to balance our needs with another person's needs. I'm not an expert by any means, but I just want love to be simpler than it is.

Okay, I'm sure this isn't making a bit of sense to you out there. I'm talking about the typical couple that we all see and I'm sad that it encompasses the majority and not the minority, but I guess that's because love takes work. Maybe I'm still trembling from post Christmas gatherings with extended kin, but men and women seem to split up into camps. Women complain about their stubborn men with irrational tempors and disrespectful and chauvanist dimeanor towards the female 'race.' Men complain that women are all emotion and no reason, that they are manipulative and selfish. Well, I know Colleen would agree, and I don't know about you, but if this is what men think of me, than I'm going to become a lesbian because I want nothing to do with this label especially in a relationship! But I don't mean this, do I? No, I love boys and perhaps I might eventually be so happy with one that I will think that happiness could last for a long time, but I understand love with whoever it may be takes work. The number one thing I think that matters, though, is respect. I hope that when I decide to make this ulimate commitment that I will make it with someone I deeply respect and who deeply respects me in all my quirkiness or it just isn't going to work beyone a shallow puddle of cute love. Which is probably why I favor quality over quantity when it comes to relationships of all kinds.

Why can't we all just get along??? Jeez, where am I going with this? I think a circuit is not wired correctly in my head today, I've totally lost the mental track I was on and am now exhausted and need to do some work.. Perhaps I'll return to this subject later. Anyway, I love you all and hope we all know what it takes to not be in the majority.