[Long Post!] Truth and Reality
Dedicated to a hidden entry by a friend, who (I'm paraphrasing) said it is now difficult to tell what was real and true, and doing so might never happen again. This entry is going to be roundabout, and it's going to lay out my thoughts as best as I can while swinging vague to protect identities in a way that doesn't require me to think on my feet, but rather with some breathing space.
Hopefully, it will be more coherent. And yes, of course I'm going to talk about me a lot. But it matters, because there are limits to my vision that have to be noted.
I am in one of the strangest positions ever conceived by humanity. I'm my own antithesis, in a way: my very existence is the reason I shouldn't. Last night, in bed, it occurred to me that there was an extremely large hole in my understanding of relationships: sex. I do not, and likely never will, really understand the role of sex in romantic relationships. Why?
I will backpedal and explain just how I know as much as I do about romance. First, I am a romantic at heart. I dream idealistically, I fantasize about (near-)impossibility, I wish and speak with little action, I dramatize and exaggerate. This is something I love about myself; I don't consider it a bad thing, especially as I have the ability to check it when I am my own master.
Second, I have studied relationships since elementary school. It was, of course, incidental at first. But I have always been a self-conscious boy, and I scrutinized my crushes from the beginning, cross-referenced my own infatuations with others in both literature and from read discussions. I gleaned generalizations and interpolated differences. And, as I grew in mind and body, I discovered that I understood these things more clearly because I am, by nature, a theorist without complication. I reduce concepts to their fundaments and work at a level below what most people are capable of thinking, let alone moving freely in.
(There are levels below mine, which I sometimes strive for, but cannot reach. I know that Josh and Seb and Sai and Albert have all reached past me to that plane of mental mastery, and I have, too, but none of us really dwell there.)
So, when in high school I embarked on my dedication to define love, I was well-prepared. Since middle school, guys have talked to me about girls, and girls have talked to me about guys. This is why, I suspect, that a stranger in Chicago spoke to me and perceived I had an understanding she only expected to be born from experience: I actually understood it in theory (and subconsciously; I didn't know what I was doing).
I have a prodigal memory--one of my most cherished powers--and a talent for recollection and remix. Combined, this produces remarkable insight. That is how I know all that I know.
Let's return to sex. There are two reasons I do not understand sex. The first is that I am a virgin. But this is hardly an impediment; I never had a relationship until late college, either. No, what really clinches my inability to understand sex is because people don't tell me about their sex lives. Which wouldn't surprise you. =P
The reason I bring it up is that I want to establish that there's a helluva lot of stuff that I don't know; you probably knew that already, but I feel I should admit it explicitly.
Now that that's established, let's move on to truth and reality.
Allow me to explain the dynamics of a relationship as best as I can in textual form. I will, for the sake of clarity, use a heterosexual relationship so that my pronouns have an easier time.
A relationship begins upon mutual discovery. Awareness of one another is the essential requirement for a human being to relate themselves to another. Whether this relationship is employer/employee, brother/sister, mentor/pupil, or lover/lover, the essence is awareness.
Friendship begins when interest heightens. You say to yourself, "This is an interesting person, who is worth spending time with and getting to know."
Romance, my personal bane, is a special subset of friendships: it involves sex, promises, expectations, and rituals. But, you might interject, can't friendships have sex? "Friends, with benefits"? Fuckbuddies? And I say, sure. Sex does not romance make. Don't friends promise things to one another? Don't they expect things of each other? Ah, yes, they do. But it's the content of those promises and expectations that distinguish romance. What about rituals? Yes, friendships involve ritual; romance merely solidifies ritual into near-institution (go, speed-dating!). What I mean is that you can expect a much more formalized set of rituals for romantic friendships than friendships in general, which are freer and allowed to cross cultures better.
So, let us discard from romantic friendships the aspects of sex (which I know little of) and ritual (which is distasteful to me to the point of disgust), and focus on promise and expectation.
What is a promise?
A promise is a statement that solidifies anticipation of the future. "Will we be together forever?" "Yes."
What is an expectation?
An expectation is a belief that a promise, said or not, will be kept.
So, now we can turn more directly to the idea of "real and true".
What is real? What is true? These are philosophical questions.
The answers? Nothing. Everything. Is there certainty in this world, in this life? None but what you create for yourself. Let me say that again: There is no certainty in this world, in this life, but what you decide. You are certain of the sun in the sky only because you believe it, because you believe your senses, because you believe your memory and what lies within it, because you believe your intelligence.
And yes, there is nothing wrong with these beliefs, these principles. By all means, hold them and rely upon them: you must rely upon something; to fail to do so is nihilistic, self-defeating: the essence of Catholic evil.
We now go back to tracing the timeline of a friendship. A friendship begins with interest: it flowers as the friends begin to see themselves in each other. They become one another; or, to put it poetically, their souls intertwine and they leave their parent to cleave with love. A healthy and mature friendship is one where one can look to the future and say, "You are eternally a part of me."
Is that real? Is that true?
Are human beings truly capable of stepping fully out of their skins, and touching another soul directly with their own? Can we human beings actually connect with another completely and utterly? You ought to ask Bob Thurman.
I think most people are incapable of it. I think that most people who believe they have accomplished it are deluding themselves, because they do not understand what it really means. I think that, if you can do it at all, you would not limit yourself to one person.
I have a terribly rough time believing that true compassion would ever limit itself to a single other human being. My own love is not limited to one person. Nor, as some of the friends in my confidence have hopefully forgotten ^_^, is it limited to four or five or ten. There are girls who, in my heart, have been enshrined and whose memory I will eternally cherish and whose life I will forever hope to contribute to. But in this same hall are people to whom I have no sexual interest. Male and female they are, for my admiration is not gendered or sexed. These are people --all of them, the aforementioned girls, and every individual beside--who have distinguished themselves in my sight, who have risen above the teeming sea of people. Differently, you might call them my Alexanders. Josh might prefer I say my Augustus's, but I'm not sure how to pluralize that appropriately. =)
Instead, in the fullness of my love, I extend my heart beyond those I cherish, beyond those I know, beyond even humanity, to the limits of the universe, the limits of my imagination, the furthest reaches of romanticism. This, I believe, is a truer love. I cannot say I am capable of achieving this extent often; it is rare that I do. But the memory of being so magnificently expansive compels me to seek it again and again. I remember what it is like to be God, in that instant; the world is suffused with sound. (RahXephon reference.)
Thus it is that I believe those who cannot see a future without their love are, in truth, self-delusional.
Don't mistake me: I do not actually condemn delusion. Delusion is a powerful and useful agent; the suspension of disbelief is one of the most useful tools in the storywriter's toolbox, and invoking and maintaining it is no trivial task. Thus, I am satisfied and content for people to believe in monogamy or marriage or some other arrangement and to live insular lives where they cherish at least one other. It is not terrible. It often makes the world a better place by providing people, often their children, with enough security and stability to reach further. Of course, it has its drawbacks, as do all things. I hope that, one day, this delusion will no longer be necessary: that marriage, exclusivity, courtship... that all these things will pass away and we may believe in our own willful selves without any crutches. Perhaps.
Let us return to friendship. Let us admit that such self-conception is self-delusion. Always changing, the future is: while it may be a stabilizing and securing presence to believe that the future, at least for the two of you, has been fixed and made certain: understand that it never was.
Certainty is a product of belief. And belief may be wrong. An expectation founded on a promise founded on a certainty founded on that belief will split asunder the lives built upon that expectation. If you build your castle on a cloud, and that cloud disintegrates, what happens to the castle? Those who have been in a painful breakup will instantly understand my meaning.
And yet, can you ever be certain of anything? As I said above, all certainties are founded on belief. I don't mean the immediately preceding paragraph; I mean, "There is no certainty in this world, in this life, but what you decide."
So yes, you must build your castle, and your castle will be upon a cloud. There is always the possibility of disillusionment, of your world shattering and your beliefs dissipating into insubstantial mist. In such moments, it is up to you to recollect the remaining fragments of that cloud and form a new one upon which you may build another castle.
Some recover. Some do not.
In my life, one great pain was when my self-delusion of greatness was finally destroyed by the lightning bolt of understanding, well and truly, that I wasn't. The pain exists for me daily, and I live with my castle crumbled, hanging by my toes from little cottony clouds insufficient to sustain me. I am still regathering my cloud, but I'm doing it, and I'm succeeding. Slowly. This post has helped.
What is real? What is true?
I am not a priest, and can offer you no assurances. But I can ask you this: are you human? If so, you have what it takes. You are a clay within your own hands, a God who shapes man and, with a playful air, puffs a breath of life into nostrils. You create, and you sculpt.
So try. Be dissatisfied. Seek better. MAKE better. Such is greatness: build, and build, and build. Build yourself, build up others, and build the universe.
The world is a mere sandbox, and there is much water to pour. And as the ring of that proverbial king states: "This, too, shall pass."
Hopefully, it will be more coherent. And yes, of course I'm going to talk about me a lot. But it matters, because there are limits to my vision that have to be noted.
I am in one of the strangest positions ever conceived by humanity. I'm my own antithesis, in a way: my very existence is the reason I shouldn't. Last night, in bed, it occurred to me that there was an extremely large hole in my understanding of relationships: sex. I do not, and likely never will, really understand the role of sex in romantic relationships. Why?
I will backpedal and explain just how I know as much as I do about romance. First, I am a romantic at heart. I dream idealistically, I fantasize about (near-)impossibility, I wish and speak with little action, I dramatize and exaggerate. This is something I love about myself; I don't consider it a bad thing, especially as I have the ability to check it when I am my own master.
Second, I have studied relationships since elementary school. It was, of course, incidental at first. But I have always been a self-conscious boy, and I scrutinized my crushes from the beginning, cross-referenced my own infatuations with others in both literature and from read discussions. I gleaned generalizations and interpolated differences. And, as I grew in mind and body, I discovered that I understood these things more clearly because I am, by nature, a theorist without complication. I reduce concepts to their fundaments and work at a level below what most people are capable of thinking, let alone moving freely in.
(There are levels below mine, which I sometimes strive for, but cannot reach. I know that Josh and Seb and Sai and Albert have all reached past me to that plane of mental mastery, and I have, too, but none of us really dwell there.)
So, when in high school I embarked on my dedication to define love, I was well-prepared. Since middle school, guys have talked to me about girls, and girls have talked to me about guys. This is why, I suspect, that a stranger in Chicago spoke to me and perceived I had an understanding she only expected to be born from experience: I actually understood it in theory (and subconsciously; I didn't know what I was doing).
I have a prodigal memory--one of my most cherished powers--and a talent for recollection and remix. Combined, this produces remarkable insight. That is how I know all that I know.
Let's return to sex. There are two reasons I do not understand sex. The first is that I am a virgin. But this is hardly an impediment; I never had a relationship until late college, either. No, what really clinches my inability to understand sex is because people don't tell me about their sex lives. Which wouldn't surprise you. =P
The reason I bring it up is that I want to establish that there's a helluva lot of stuff that I don't know; you probably knew that already, but I feel I should admit it explicitly.
Now that that's established, let's move on to truth and reality.
Allow me to explain the dynamics of a relationship as best as I can in textual form. I will, for the sake of clarity, use a heterosexual relationship so that my pronouns have an easier time.
A relationship begins upon mutual discovery. Awareness of one another is the essential requirement for a human being to relate themselves to another. Whether this relationship is employer/employee, brother/sister, mentor/pupil, or lover/lover, the essence is awareness.
Friendship begins when interest heightens. You say to yourself, "This is an interesting person, who is worth spending time with and getting to know."
Romance, my personal bane, is a special subset of friendships: it involves sex, promises, expectations, and rituals. But, you might interject, can't friendships have sex? "Friends, with benefits"? Fuckbuddies? And I say, sure. Sex does not romance make. Don't friends promise things to one another? Don't they expect things of each other? Ah, yes, they do. But it's the content of those promises and expectations that distinguish romance. What about rituals? Yes, friendships involve ritual; romance merely solidifies ritual into near-institution (go, speed-dating!). What I mean is that you can expect a much more formalized set of rituals for romantic friendships than friendships in general, which are freer and allowed to cross cultures better.
So, let us discard from romantic friendships the aspects of sex (which I know little of) and ritual (which is distasteful to me to the point of disgust), and focus on promise and expectation.
What is a promise?
A promise is a statement that solidifies anticipation of the future. "Will we be together forever?" "Yes."
What is an expectation?
An expectation is a belief that a promise, said or not, will be kept.
So, now we can turn more directly to the idea of "real and true".
What is real? What is true? These are philosophical questions.
The answers? Nothing. Everything. Is there certainty in this world, in this life? None but what you create for yourself. Let me say that again: There is no certainty in this world, in this life, but what you decide. You are certain of the sun in the sky only because you believe it, because you believe your senses, because you believe your memory and what lies within it, because you believe your intelligence.
And yes, there is nothing wrong with these beliefs, these principles. By all means, hold them and rely upon them: you must rely upon something; to fail to do so is nihilistic, self-defeating: the essence of Catholic evil.
We now go back to tracing the timeline of a friendship. A friendship begins with interest: it flowers as the friends begin to see themselves in each other. They become one another; or, to put it poetically, their souls intertwine and they leave their parent to cleave with love. A healthy and mature friendship is one where one can look to the future and say, "You are eternally a part of me."
Is that real? Is that true?
Are human beings truly capable of stepping fully out of their skins, and touching another soul directly with their own? Can we human beings actually connect with another completely and utterly? You ought to ask Bob Thurman.
I think most people are incapable of it. I think that most people who believe they have accomplished it are deluding themselves, because they do not understand what it really means. I think that, if you can do it at all, you would not limit yourself to one person.
I have a terribly rough time believing that true compassion would ever limit itself to a single other human being. My own love is not limited to one person. Nor, as some of the friends in my confidence have hopefully forgotten ^_^, is it limited to four or five or ten. There are girls who, in my heart, have been enshrined and whose memory I will eternally cherish and whose life I will forever hope to contribute to. But in this same hall are people to whom I have no sexual interest. Male and female they are, for my admiration is not gendered or sexed. These are people --all of them, the aforementioned girls, and every individual beside--who have distinguished themselves in my sight, who have risen above the teeming sea of people. Differently, you might call them my Alexanders. Josh might prefer I say my Augustus's, but I'm not sure how to pluralize that appropriately. =)
Instead, in the fullness of my love, I extend my heart beyond those I cherish, beyond those I know, beyond even humanity, to the limits of the universe, the limits of my imagination, the furthest reaches of romanticism. This, I believe, is a truer love. I cannot say I am capable of achieving this extent often; it is rare that I do. But the memory of being so magnificently expansive compels me to seek it again and again. I remember what it is like to be God, in that instant; the world is suffused with sound. (RahXephon reference.)
Thus it is that I believe those who cannot see a future without their love are, in truth, self-delusional.
Don't mistake me: I do not actually condemn delusion. Delusion is a powerful and useful agent; the suspension of disbelief is one of the most useful tools in the storywriter's toolbox, and invoking and maintaining it is no trivial task. Thus, I am satisfied and content for people to believe in monogamy or marriage or some other arrangement and to live insular lives where they cherish at least one other. It is not terrible. It often makes the world a better place by providing people, often their children, with enough security and stability to reach further. Of course, it has its drawbacks, as do all things. I hope that, one day, this delusion will no longer be necessary: that marriage, exclusivity, courtship... that all these things will pass away and we may believe in our own willful selves without any crutches. Perhaps.
Let us return to friendship. Let us admit that such self-conception is self-delusion. Always changing, the future is: while it may be a stabilizing and securing presence to believe that the future, at least for the two of you, has been fixed and made certain: understand that it never was.
Certainty is a product of belief. And belief may be wrong. An expectation founded on a promise founded on a certainty founded on that belief will split asunder the lives built upon that expectation. If you build your castle on a cloud, and that cloud disintegrates, what happens to the castle? Those who have been in a painful breakup will instantly understand my meaning.
And yet, can you ever be certain of anything? As I said above, all certainties are founded on belief. I don't mean the immediately preceding paragraph; I mean, "There is no certainty in this world, in this life, but what you decide."
So yes, you must build your castle, and your castle will be upon a cloud. There is always the possibility of disillusionment, of your world shattering and your beliefs dissipating into insubstantial mist. In such moments, it is up to you to recollect the remaining fragments of that cloud and form a new one upon which you may build another castle.
Some recover. Some do not.
In my life, one great pain was when my self-delusion of greatness was finally destroyed by the lightning bolt of understanding, well and truly, that I wasn't. The pain exists for me daily, and I live with my castle crumbled, hanging by my toes from little cottony clouds insufficient to sustain me. I am still regathering my cloud, but I'm doing it, and I'm succeeding. Slowly. This post has helped.
What is real? What is true?
I am not a priest, and can offer you no assurances. But I can ask you this: are you human? If so, you have what it takes. You are a clay within your own hands, a God who shapes man and, with a playful air, puffs a breath of life into nostrils. You create, and you sculpt.
So try. Be dissatisfied. Seek better. MAKE better. Such is greatness: build, and build, and build. Build yourself, build up others, and build the universe.
The world is a mere sandbox, and there is much water to pour. And as the ring of that proverbial king states: "This, too, shall pass."