So...team...this one is...a little unfinished.
Forgive me for being unfinished, I just feel like it' s a lesson I'm
in process on and just don't have the right answers...if I ever will.
Enjoy some vague glimpses into some of my thoughts and concerns. Good
luck.
So
I feel like I need to learn friendship better...with everyone but
especially with women. Being all old...ish and single sucks. It makes
you all antsy and paranoid at the same time....like any attractive
woman who walks into your life may carry both the burden of complete
stranger and potential “mother of my children.”
However,
as you may assume, this isn't really fair.
It
certainly isn't fair to me...It's stupid. It's setting myself
up...What kind of mindless fool walks around unable to picture a
member of the opposite sex as anything more than a potential
mate...besides roughly 50 percent of men between the ages of 13 and
80.
When
I do this I totally cheat myself out of relationship...out of
anything deeper than eye candy and external beauty....chocolate cake
on display in store window... I'm the fat kid sticking his face up
against the glass thinking that proximity is consumption.
Secondly...It's
even more unfair to her....I used the word consumption just
there....and that is what it is...a means to an end...my own ends. Of
course...I, like most people, would never say it like that.
I
think I will get married some day...despite all evidence to the
contrary. I have gone through a lot of crap and even though I've seen some healing I'm still unfinished, I still have
questions. This is normal I suppose but I think before I can ever consider marriage I have to believe better things about myself and
others.
I wrote a letter to
my wife the other night...the one I don't have. I don't usually do
this but a middle ages man told me to in a sermon so I did it. I
wrote it to this nameless entity...that existed somewhere outside of
space and time...or maybe Idaho...maybe she was in Idaho...I don't
know...anyway.... I stood talking to myself....I don't do this
to often but sometimes I just have lines that pop into my head and
out my mouth and I find myself reciting them into the nothing like
Hamlet .
I said something
like “I could wed you and bed you...” I know it sounds archaic but I think it was fun because
it rhymed... I was speaking to the ideal, the person beyond reach of
voice who would be there if she came back from Idaho, and for a
moment it was pure.
I didn't know it
when I spoke but as the line hit the air and ricocheted of the bed,
floor and walls and came back to me I heard the lines unsaid behind
them...
...The other lines
whispered past my ears, they whisked past like smoke trails off a
jet. The next line said “There was beauty in the want...”And I
knew was true. I wanted it for all the good things.
...It
would be for the search of love, for intimacy, for the goodness and
joy I read about in all the stories, for the butterflies and sweaty
palms of middle school. It was to know that the search could find
it's hope and redemption, the alleviation of suffering. I wanted the
mesh of emotions we find in our tears at the end of movies. I wanted
ALL the good things.
But
then...something else...something I didn't expect.
The
lines came quicker and thinner now, like a rope fraying out to a weak
end, like the guitar chord rung out with one sour note in it. If
emotions had poor grammar I knew I misspelled something. What was
it?...Then in one foul moment the thought became as potent as opening
a grave. The line, although pure and true on top...still reeked of
spoil underneath. At it's root, the base, the bottom most thought and
motive and heart was still “me.”
The
statement wore the cloak of beauty over the rotting corps of
selfishness and self-preservation. This person, this fictional being
in my bed, had become a symbol of happiness, a finding of joy,...they
become the gateway to those things all the kids dream of and the pop
stars sing about. The Daisy among thorns.
This
is the greatest paradox in existence in my experience. What I mean is
“Love” is the greatest desire of men's hearts and yet the only
thing that cannot be fully experienced without the loss of self. It
can only be experienced by coming a little out of one's self and
experiencing the other fully as themselves, faults and cellulite
included.
So...what
I'm trying to say, I don't know anyone in Idaho, but even if I did is
friendship is not simple and it is not a means to an end. I ought not
learn it because if I do I will then be worthy of another's company.
I still somehow need to learn friendship is not an exchange and it is
not a prize. It is a decision. It is, in all forms, a decision for
long suffering, because when most people think about friendship they
think about the benefits. Most do not stop to consider the costs, the
reality that you take on not only your own burdens but that of the
other each day you choose them...It is not about the person you usually think
most about,...you.
I
don't have it figured out, but I need to care about people better,
particularly women. It's not that I don't care...I do...that's why
I'm even bringing it up, I guess I'm just realizing I fail. I need to
believe better things about others in my heart of hearts, most notably that their lives are not
about my pleasure...I guess this is why Jesus
seems so persistent in this lesson.
Thanks
for Reading,
-JS
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