One Fact:
If there is one thing you need to understand to get a full picture of who I am, one thing that in fact makes me who I am, it's this:
Love endures.
In Babylon 5, Delenn once simply stated, "faith manages". That, to me, is the key to her character. I know a real person is a whole lot different from a fictional character, but this is my key, my core.
Love endures.
Unless they have wilfully and violently destroyed it (which typically requires trying to destroy me, a feat which only a very small number have even attempted), there exists a room in my heart for everyone who has ever ventured there, and even for some who have only knocked on the door. My heart understands that sometimes no cruelty should be assumed, and that we each have our stories to tell, our lives to live. I've never been any good at holding a grudge, except of course when it's richly deserved. So when someone moves out, for whatever reason, I throw dustcloths over the furniture, turn out the lights, and lock the door, but every room belongs always and only to its owner, and every room endures.
I love extravagantly -- as Shakespeare said, "not wisely but too well" -- and without regard for our cultural need to categorize things. Romantic love, fraternal love, platonic love, caregiver-love, love is love is love! Those qualifiers may represent shades, but all of the same colour. If I were to think too hard about it (like I do), I'd probably wonder if that's why I've never had trouble shifting from one mode to another when I love someone. The difference between one and the next is often invisible to me.
Okay, so that can complicate things when one mode is off-limits, but surprisingly little -- because they're so alien in many ways, I'm hyperaware of the boundaries created by social conditioning, and I police them obsessively as a way to protect myself from them. But I digress, since I never had anything to police in this case.
Today I said goodbye to someone I came to love, in my way, someone who carved out his room in my heart quite unexpectedly with interesting ideas, passion for what drives him, and being an all-around terrible human being (*wink*). I bought him a cup of coffee and put him on a Greyhound. And then I offered what comfort I could to my friend, his partner of many years, who has her own room in my heart. We'll meet again, I'm sure, and regardless, electronic media make it a challenge not to keep in touch! But this was an ending, one I felt compelled to mark in person.
I honestly don't know how to let go, to shut out someone whom I've let in. And so, love endures, whether we speak daily or not for years, whether it's the love of a friend or of a brother or of the most intimate lover. Its shade may change, but never the colour: the colour of love is constant, and it paints every wall of every room.
That's just who I am. Love endures.
- - -
"For this is wrong, if anything is wrong: not to enlarge the freedom of a love with all the inner freedom one can summon. We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go." -- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Requiem for a Friend"
Love endures.
In Babylon 5, Delenn once simply stated, "faith manages". That, to me, is the key to her character. I know a real person is a whole lot different from a fictional character, but this is my key, my core.
Love endures.
Unless they have wilfully and violently destroyed it (which typically requires trying to destroy me, a feat which only a very small number have even attempted), there exists a room in my heart for everyone who has ever ventured there, and even for some who have only knocked on the door. My heart understands that sometimes no cruelty should be assumed, and that we each have our stories to tell, our lives to live. I've never been any good at holding a grudge, except of course when it's richly deserved. So when someone moves out, for whatever reason, I throw dustcloths over the furniture, turn out the lights, and lock the door, but every room belongs always and only to its owner, and every room endures.
I love extravagantly -- as Shakespeare said, "not wisely but too well" -- and without regard for our cultural need to categorize things. Romantic love, fraternal love, platonic love, caregiver-love, love is love is love! Those qualifiers may represent shades, but all of the same colour. If I were to think too hard about it (like I do), I'd probably wonder if that's why I've never had trouble shifting from one mode to another when I love someone. The difference between one and the next is often invisible to me.
Okay, so that can complicate things when one mode is off-limits, but surprisingly little -- because they're so alien in many ways, I'm hyperaware of the boundaries created by social conditioning, and I police them obsessively as a way to protect myself from them. But I digress, since I never had anything to police in this case.
Today I said goodbye to someone I came to love, in my way, someone who carved out his room in my heart quite unexpectedly with interesting ideas, passion for what drives him, and being an all-around terrible human being (*wink*). I bought him a cup of coffee and put him on a Greyhound. And then I offered what comfort I could to my friend, his partner of many years, who has her own room in my heart. We'll meet again, I'm sure, and regardless, electronic media make it a challenge not to keep in touch! But this was an ending, one I felt compelled to mark in person.
I honestly don't know how to let go, to shut out someone whom I've let in. And so, love endures, whether we speak daily or not for years, whether it's the love of a friend or of a brother or of the most intimate lover. Its shade may change, but never the colour: the colour of love is constant, and it paints every wall of every room.
That's just who I am. Love endures.
- - -
"For this is wrong, if anything is wrong: not to enlarge the freedom of a love with all the inner freedom one can summon. We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go." -- Rainer Maria Rilke, "Requiem for a Friend"