(no subject)
Feb. 24th, 2007 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jrisingFirst, some activities.
A friend and I are struggling through Ulysses-- join in! We just started, and we're using a guidebook, a book of footnotes, and online resources to light the way. We meet to discuss the first 50 pages next Thursday.
The Salon is spawning a Film Group! Deep movies, bizarre movies, classic movies: the overarching theme is something like "films that make you think". The first movie will probably be Fantastic Planet, this Tuesday, February 27, at 8pm in MIT room 2-105. You should come watch, and tell me if you want the announcements! There's even a page to collect our movie recommendations-- go to http://existencia.org/salon/movies/ and add some!
I'm thinking of hosting another Rocky party on March 3! And I thought it'd be fun to run a cocktail bar there: what's your favorite drink?
Now, a little rant.
The world seems over-boiling with people searching for love-- yearning for it and dejected in their lack of it. To be clear, I mean a particular brand of love: significant-other love. There are few creations that have brought as much misery and personal confusion as that one.
I'm no different. I want a girlfriend too. I want someone to share my joy with. I want the sex. I want the cuddling. I want the warmth next to me when I'm asleep. It's not that I think love can't be fun and worthwhile, but it doesn't seem to do any of the things people want it to.
For example, love doesn't bring you happiness. Cathexis, sure, which can be fun the way a good night of drinking is, but is that happiness? Love intensifies emotions, and stresses them, but it can't make happiness out of thin air. And if it does, the result is a dynamic where you rely on (demand from?) the other person for the ingredients for your own happiness. It's a recipe for hurt.
Love can give you newfound reasons for living, but it does this by what it takes away, not by what it adds. People seem to imagine love like the divided creatures from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. They want to glom onto another person and somehow grow and find new security in shear mass. Love is desire, which is a radical lack, not a fulfillment. We love into our weaknesses, but using the object of our love to "fill up" our holes is the same recipe for hurt. All love can do for our deficiencies is reveal them to us (but this may be exactly love's most powerful gift).
Worst of all, people depend on each other for love. My teacher in philosophy said that all fights in relationships are because one party believes the other doesn't love "enough". Love is among the most fluid and unreliable of the emotions, and it's as different from on day to the next as it is different on the two sides of the relationship. Expecting anything of love, and drawing conclusions of what it should mean to the other person, is a sure way to kill it.
A friend and I are struggling through Ulysses-- join in! We just started, and we're using a guidebook, a book of footnotes, and online resources to light the way. We meet to discuss the first 50 pages next Thursday.
The Salon is spawning a Film Group! Deep movies, bizarre movies, classic movies: the overarching theme is something like "films that make you think". The first movie will probably be Fantastic Planet, this Tuesday, February 27, at 8pm in MIT room 2-105. You should come watch, and tell me if you want the announcements! There's even a page to collect our movie recommendations-- go to http://existencia.org/salon/movies/ and add some!
I'm thinking of hosting another Rocky party on March 3! And I thought it'd be fun to run a cocktail bar there: what's your favorite drink?
Now, a little rant.
The world seems over-boiling with people searching for love-- yearning for it and dejected in their lack of it. To be clear, I mean a particular brand of love: significant-other love. There are few creations that have brought as much misery and personal confusion as that one.
I'm no different. I want a girlfriend too. I want someone to share my joy with. I want the sex. I want the cuddling. I want the warmth next to me when I'm asleep. It's not that I think love can't be fun and worthwhile, but it doesn't seem to do any of the things people want it to.
For example, love doesn't bring you happiness. Cathexis, sure, which can be fun the way a good night of drinking is, but is that happiness? Love intensifies emotions, and stresses them, but it can't make happiness out of thin air. And if it does, the result is a dynamic where you rely on (demand from?) the other person for the ingredients for your own happiness. It's a recipe for hurt.
Love can give you newfound reasons for living, but it does this by what it takes away, not by what it adds. People seem to imagine love like the divided creatures from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. They want to glom onto another person and somehow grow and find new security in shear mass. Love is desire, which is a radical lack, not a fulfillment. We love into our weaknesses, but using the object of our love to "fill up" our holes is the same recipe for hurt. All love can do for our deficiencies is reveal them to us (but this may be exactly love's most powerful gift).
Worst of all, people depend on each other for love. My teacher in philosophy said that all fights in relationships are because one party believes the other doesn't love "enough". Love is among the most fluid and unreliable of the emotions, and it's as different from on day to the next as it is different on the two sides of the relationship. Expecting anything of love, and drawing conclusions of what it should mean to the other person, is a sure way to kill it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 01:14 pm (UTC)This is precisely how it happened to me. One day I just looked at Jack and realized I didn't want to do without him. There wasn't anything unusual about that day. I don't remember when it happened, just being surprised that it did. It felt like opening a box in the back of your closet and finding somthing you really liked that you'd misplaced.
Love is a weird summation of a lot of little things that add up to more than the sum of their parts.
How do I know my husband loves me? He gets up and makes me coffee. He washes the dishes. He pisses me off like no one else can. He cuts the dowel rods for me when I am stacking cake tiers, even though he hates being in the kitchen when I am making wedding cakes. He does my laundry. He hides my stuff in the back of closets when he's on a "cleaning" spree. He helps me find it when I get pissed off because it's missing. He's happier to see me than a retriever puppy.
How do I know I love him? I make dinner. I snuggle. I pick up his dirty socks which he leaves fucking everywhere. I make peace between him and his insane family. I arrange his social life so that he actually goes out and sees his friends. I force "fun" upon him. (Jack's a workaholic, so fun must sneak up on him to have a chance.)
These are all just flags, though, that help me explain something essentially unexplainable.
I don't know that having him in my life solved all my problems. It solved some and made a few more. But I wouldn't trade him.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-24 08:44 pm (UTC)I think that you should expect from love the things that can't otherwise be obtained. You shouldn't expect a complete answer to loneliness, insecurity, debt, a busy lifestyle, or any number of things you can probably think of that I can't right now. You should be able to solve any of these problems on your own - and though your partner will probably do their best to help you in any way they can, they can only help to guide you - but they may not even be able to do that adequately, because those personal skills don't have much correlation with the ability to love.
True, my special someone makes me feel less lonely - but before I met her, I had to solve my own problems relating to loneliness and poor friendships. That said, she has introduced me to lovely new friends and helped to accelerate some of the things I wanted to change - I find myself attracted to her intelligence and personal skills, which (though I try not to rely on) are a huge boon. I guess I shouldn't be going into details about what she has and hasn't done in such a public forum, but suffice it to say I wouldn't trade her either.