It can be a messy little spot on the map of our lives. It represents a place where we both love and fail each other.
Speaking only for myself, I know I am capable, at times, of taking people I love for granted. I say things to them and I do things to them that I often would not say or do to others. I expect things from them I often would not expect of others.
I also hope they will not take me for granted. I wish, at times, they were not able to say things to me that I never expect to hear from someone I believe loves me. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel that they expect too much from me.
They and I do all of those things to each other because within the binds that tie us we interpret a license to interact with each other in that manner. Be it solely emotional or legal, we see it as a tether that allows us that behavior, assumes a tolerance for it, and obligates us to withstand it without breaking those ties.
For those people in my life outside that personal circle, I can simply dismiss them if I choose. I can choose to not have them in my life by either losing or avoiding contact with them. I can express my disappointment in them and we can say our goodbyes if we cannot realign or come together, or I can quietly withdraw from them without a word. I can even—in today’s world—simply delete them. It can be as simple as that.
But, with those close to me I feel an obligation that translates into a contract fraught with moral, social, emotional, and even psychological complexities. I want their love and appreciation, and I want them to desire the same from me, hopefully at an equivalent level. However, that love and appreciation also comes with strings that can often get a little twisted. Sometimes those strings tug and cause us harm.
I think I am both fortunate and cursed with the ability to feel intensely, or, as a friend once put it, I have a big heart. Depending on how you see it, that description can be either a compliment or a caution. I see it as an advantage because it allows me a satiating depth with people and things I love and enjoy. But, I know it equally as a curse, because it also affords that same depth of feeling in those people or things that cause me pain.
I am also observant, or at the very least, willing to be observant. I have always been curious about myself, and others, and human nature, and interaction. The upside of that curiosity is that it opens my eyes to things that others might possibly find trivial and mundane and makes them significant to me. The downside: I may not always like what it is I see, or I may see things not really there, or read too much into something.
And like many, I hold on, long and strong, to the memories which have a charge of emotion attached to them, be they pleasant or unpleasant.
Where the unpleasant is concerned, it seems to really stick with me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I keep an emotional chalkboard where I mentally tally the hurts. I know this of myself, and I try work on it, on the letting go and the erasure of those chalk marks, but it’s never easy. I find I can often forgive, but I cannot as often forget, and I am not sure I am really doing one without doing the other.
The forgetting part is what gets in the way of wiping the slate clean. Even when I try my hardest, the faintly erased marks flash up in memory whenever something resembling their previous scoring erupts in my present. “Here we go again,” I say to myself, and I begin questioning why I ever let myself be put in that same position.
However, I want to be in that exact position, actually, because my desire and need to forgive and forget is rooted in the addiction I have for that feeling forgiveness affords me. I enjoy that feeling of peace, and I appreciate the feeling I get from trying to rise to a selfless act.
It keeps me coming back to that conflicted space of vulnerability. I want the feeling of humility required to suspend my own needs. I want to give of myself to another, while—at the same time—I fear it and see it as a giant leap of faith. I teeter between the confidence that my leap is taken with, and for, someone that will not make me regret it, and the dread that my faith in the other person, or persons, is foolishly misplaced. Therein lies the rub, because I know going in that those I want to love and trust are, like me, imperfect people. They are people very capable of failing my expectations and saying, doing, or being someone or something other than what or who I hoped.
In thinking this through, it dawned on me that I may have hit on two of the most important components of an endearing and enduring relationship. When I look around me, those I know who have great relationships are those people who seem to have the desire and ability to be both humble and vulnerable with each other, on a consistent and balanced level.
It is as if those two qualities are the subtle subtexts of their relationship, signaling to each other—sometimes spoken, but most often only reflected—their trust in each other. Each entrusts their feelings to the other, and rewards the returned care of those feelings with reciprocating respect and sheltering. Not much seems necessary to prove to each other, nor does there seem to be any sort of competing or driving ambitions. Nor does one necessarily support or sustain the other disproportionately.
And I think when it fails, or doesn’t even begin to develop, maybe it’s not the failure of one person only, but instead a case where two of most important puzzle pieces are missing. Maybe one person is not solely to blame; it’s more likely that those two people simply fail to inspire those feelings between each other. Neither is a lesser person for it. They are just mismatched.
From what I see in those where it all comes together, it doesn’t seem to me that either person possesses humility or sensitivity as their central or most prominent characteristic, but instead that they each have those as innate abilities drawn out by, and enhanced by, each other. In each other they have found that “sweet spot,” where they are inspired by each other to be a better person, to take the greatest of care with each other’s feelings, and have a consistent desire to sustain and maintain that balance of care, respect, appreciation, and affection for each other.
Maybe that is the nirvana of a great relationship and what people are really referring to when they call something love. I’m not sure. I only know what I see.
© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.
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