As I recently stated, there are two things that make life worth living: passion, and love.
Some people say that love is something that happens to you. You fall into it. You surrender to it. Some people say that love is a series of chemical reactions in the brain. They say that it's "nothing more than a feeling".
Those people are wrong, at least partly.
Some people say you should be careful with whom and how you fall in love. These people differentiate between "true love" and that which is not true. They say love is rare. They say you can't love what you don't know. They say you must guard your heart against making the mistake of loving the wrong person.
Those people are wrong, too.
Let's consider first the argument that love is a feeling. This is perhaps the fault of our language which is, to paraphrase William Golding, the straight-jacket of our experience. We say that we "feel love." In this way, we equate love with other feelings - other chemical reactions - like euphoria, sadness, excitement. In truth, these are not good comparisons. These feelings are all simply states of being. We don't feel love the way we feel happiness or sadness. The feeling we call love is a feeling of perception, not merely a state of being. We say that we *are* sad, but we say that we are *in* love. With these word choices we reveal that we perceive sadness as a state of being that defines us, but love as something that we feel when it envelops us, just as we feel the sun when its warmth envelops us.
Love, unlike sadness or happiness, is also uniquely a feeling that is also a verb. You can't sad, you can't hungry. You can only *be* these things. But look at how we use the word love: we love our family, we love our friends, we love the city, we love the mountains. Love is an action. We are the doers and receivers of an action called love. We love and are loved. Although the feeling of love originates within us, unlike other feelings, it always and necessarily involves both a subject and an object. We cannot feel love unless someone is engaged in the act of loving, whether it is our own act of love towards others that we feel, or others' acts of love towards us.
If love is an action, does that then mean that it's a choice? Absolutely. Love is not just something we fall into, surrender to, or something that happens to us (although it does indeed often have its way with us). We can choose to love as easily as we can choose to climb mountains, which is to say: with purpose and intention. We don't (usually) find ourselves suddenly at the top of the mountain without having chosen to get there, but if we make up our minds and set out for the summit with purpose, we will eventually arrive.
The trickier question is whether we can choose not to love. We can certainly harden our hearts and close ourselves to the possibility of love for people and things. Perhaps because someone has the wrong religion, the wrong politics, or the wrong ideas, we close ourselves from the potential to love them. We find it much more difficult to choose to stop loving, which is perhaps why we begin to speak of love as something uncontrollable that happens to us. Once we've begun to love someone, whether absent-mindedly or with fullness of purpose, we have a hard time stopping. Love is addictive. We are truly "hooked on a feeling." Love is addictive because, like anything else addictive, it feels good when we're doing it. The cynics who talk about love being a series of chemical reactions aren't wrong (they're just not seeing the whole picture).
Those of you familiar with my stance on addiction will know that I don't consider addiction per se to be a negative thing. It is addiction to harmful and damaging things which is negative. Indeed, could there be anything better than addiction to something which is only beneficial? Love, like anything else addictive, is addictive even when it hurts. And like most things that are addictive, it's the sudden absence of our drug of choice that makes us hurt.
The good news is, there's no permanent damage done. We've all been hurt. Many of us have fallen in love and had our hearts broken. Or maybe we've lost a loved one to illness and death. Yet here we stand today…and we're all just fine. Most of us, in fact, are better than fine. We have wonderful memories that remind us what the great possibilities for our lives are. We often retain deep bonds with our former lovers that, despite all the difficulties and the heartache, remain much stronger than our other human connections.
Some people, recoiling from the pain of heartbreak, are like the addict going clean: they steel their hearts and determine never to love again. I'd like to suggest a second option: soften your heart and determine to love more. (We could call it the ibogaine option.) If it's the absence of love that is causing you pain, then go get more love. It's inexpensive, can be found anywhere, it's infinitely reproducible, and a steady supply has no known negative side effects.
The only reason we think we can't just go out and get more love is because we insist upon creating an artificial shortage. We create a false economy of love with all our admonishments to be careful with whom and how we fall in love, with our hesitancy and our guarded hearts, with our insistence that true love is rare and everything else we might think is love is false. It seems that we are afraid that if love is common, it won't be valuable. That if we love everyone, then our love for our chosen life partner is less significant. This couldn't be further from the truth. Is air less valuable because it is abundant? Is water? Love is as critical to our health and well-being as air and water, so let's sow it as common as dandelions and know that that makes it no less special or important.
Let's choose love. Let's create love. Let's be love.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
On passion
The two things that I believe make life worth living, and give humanity any hope of surviving, are love and passion.
Passion seems to be the easy one. Passion is what invigorates you, what you do for the pure experience of doing it, what makes you wake up in the morning happy to be what you are.
It's cliché to say, but Burning Man changed my life. I had heard of the giant party that was Burning Man, and that was true. I had heard of the freedom and self-expression that was Burning Man, and that was true, too. What I wasn't prepared for was the way Burning Man would shake my emotional foundations. A campmate said to me, "We all bring our own baggage to Burning Man." Even as I tried to treat Burning Man as a vacation to get away from it all, it all weighed on me and made itself known.
Everything I tried not to think about and tried not to acknowledge, everything I buried so deep inside of me came bubbling to the surface in that desert. The lies I told myself to get by in the real world became transparent on the playa, prompted by nothing in particular except the radical honesty of the culture I was temporarily inhabiting. It was contagious, this honesty. I wrote letters to friends from the depths of myself, expressing my true feelings without fear of misunderstanding or poor reception. Most importantly, I was honest with myself for the first time in a long time. I confronted my fears, I admitted my desires, I reveled in my inherent self.
And on the night of the temple burn, just when I was thinking I'd figured this whole thing out, I cried. I cried without knowing why I was crying, only that there was a deep and aching sadness inside of me. I cried because I felt alone in a crowd of 50,000 friendly strangers and a dozen close friends. I cried because I felt that I wasn't supposed to cry and because I wanted nothing more than to cry. I cried for every vague moment of sadness that year that I had ignored and pushed down into a tiny little ball inside of me.
Later, after the burn, I sat and talked with two campmates who were also struggling. In a moment of clarity, after lamenting the conditions of my off-playa life, I said, "It's just that I have nothing in my life that I'm truly passionate about."
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew how true they were, and was amazed that I had ignored such a simple fact for so long. I was stuck in a rut of work and mundane socializing, with no connection to a larger picture, no impact on the world, no projects I was completing--nothing that I could say I was truly passionate about. Of course I was unhappy. I resolved then and there that when I returned to Camp Reality, I would make passion a priority and not an afterthought.
Upon returning, some of the first things I did were: to re-enroll in belly dance courses to remain passionately connected with my body. To resume my volunteer activities with the local animal shelter, to remain passionately connected with my community. To honestly address my relationships with the people closest to me, to remain passionately connected to my loved ones. And, to get a tattoo that would forever remind me that passion should be a priority, and not a last resort:
I will never again forget the importance of passion in my life. My commitment to myself is to live my life, always, with passion.
I'm very much looking forward to Burning Man 2011.
As for love, that'll have to wait for another blog post that I promise will be coming soon.
Passion seems to be the easy one. Passion is what invigorates you, what you do for the pure experience of doing it, what makes you wake up in the morning happy to be what you are.
It's cliché to say, but Burning Man changed my life. I had heard of the giant party that was Burning Man, and that was true. I had heard of the freedom and self-expression that was Burning Man, and that was true, too. What I wasn't prepared for was the way Burning Man would shake my emotional foundations. A campmate said to me, "We all bring our own baggage to Burning Man." Even as I tried to treat Burning Man as a vacation to get away from it all, it all weighed on me and made itself known.
Everything I tried not to think about and tried not to acknowledge, everything I buried so deep inside of me came bubbling to the surface in that desert. The lies I told myself to get by in the real world became transparent on the playa, prompted by nothing in particular except the radical honesty of the culture I was temporarily inhabiting. It was contagious, this honesty. I wrote letters to friends from the depths of myself, expressing my true feelings without fear of misunderstanding or poor reception. Most importantly, I was honest with myself for the first time in a long time. I confronted my fears, I admitted my desires, I reveled in my inherent self.
And on the night of the temple burn, just when I was thinking I'd figured this whole thing out, I cried. I cried without knowing why I was crying, only that there was a deep and aching sadness inside of me. I cried because I felt alone in a crowd of 50,000 friendly strangers and a dozen close friends. I cried because I felt that I wasn't supposed to cry and because I wanted nothing more than to cry. I cried for every vague moment of sadness that year that I had ignored and pushed down into a tiny little ball inside of me.
Later, after the burn, I sat and talked with two campmates who were also struggling. In a moment of clarity, after lamenting the conditions of my off-playa life, I said, "It's just that I have nothing in my life that I'm truly passionate about."
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew how true they were, and was amazed that I had ignored such a simple fact for so long. I was stuck in a rut of work and mundane socializing, with no connection to a larger picture, no impact on the world, no projects I was completing--nothing that I could say I was truly passionate about. Of course I was unhappy. I resolved then and there that when I returned to Camp Reality, I would make passion a priority and not an afterthought.
Upon returning, some of the first things I did were: to re-enroll in belly dance courses to remain passionately connected with my body. To resume my volunteer activities with the local animal shelter, to remain passionately connected with my community. To honestly address my relationships with the people closest to me, to remain passionately connected to my loved ones. And, to get a tattoo that would forever remind me that passion should be a priority, and not a last resort:
I will never again forget the importance of passion in my life. My commitment to myself is to live my life, always, with passion.
I'm very much looking forward to Burning Man 2011.
As for love, that'll have to wait for another blog post that I promise will be coming soon.
Saturday, January 15, 2011
All I Need to Know About Relationships I Learned from My Cats
At the risk of sounding like a "crazy cat lady", I think that maybe it's my cats that have ruined me for relationships. I was laying in bed when Mouse jumped up and settled down next to me. I petted him, and he began to purr. I told him I loved him very much, and though he didn't answer, I know he loves me.
He's not what you think of when you imagine the perfect roommate. I have to clean up after his poo, he makes a mess whenever he eats, he gets his hair all over everything I own, and he's quite fond of trying to see how much noise he can get a plastic bag to make at 5am when I'm trying to stay asleep for one more hour. He's a mooch, of course, eating food that I buy and visiting the vet annually at my expense, and contributing no income to the house.
I'm no perfect host, either. My travels take me away from him for days at a time occasionally, he's left alone for large swaths of each day while I'm at work, and I make him eat the same thing day in and day out ad infinitum. I've even stumbled over and sometimes stepped on him a few times.
Yet we love each other. For all our flaws and inadequacies, we have a bond that can't be broken. He doesn't judge me when I spend an entire day in my pajamas watching Sex and the City. When I have a bad day and finally get home to cry, he's there in an instant to nuzzle my cheeks and groom my bangs. And all he wants in return is for me to sit next to him and stroke his fur until he falls asleep.
Isn't that what we are all looking for in a life partner? Someone who, whatever their flaws and whatever our flaws, will curl up next to us at the end of the night and just be in love with us?
He's not what you think of when you imagine the perfect roommate. I have to clean up after his poo, he makes a mess whenever he eats, he gets his hair all over everything I own, and he's quite fond of trying to see how much noise he can get a plastic bag to make at 5am when I'm trying to stay asleep for one more hour. He's a mooch, of course, eating food that I buy and visiting the vet annually at my expense, and contributing no income to the house.
I'm no perfect host, either. My travels take me away from him for days at a time occasionally, he's left alone for large swaths of each day while I'm at work, and I make him eat the same thing day in and day out ad infinitum. I've even stumbled over and sometimes stepped on him a few times.
Yet we love each other. For all our flaws and inadequacies, we have a bond that can't be broken. He doesn't judge me when I spend an entire day in my pajamas watching Sex and the City. When I have a bad day and finally get home to cry, he's there in an instant to nuzzle my cheeks and groom my bangs. And all he wants in return is for me to sit next to him and stroke his fur until he falls asleep.
Isn't that what we are all looking for in a life partner? Someone who, whatever their flaws and whatever our flaws, will curl up next to us at the end of the night and just be in love with us?
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Living Alone
Here's the thing about living alone. Whatever it is you love to do, you kinda just start doing, no matter how ridiculous or potentially embarrassing it might be. It makes me dread the day I con some lady/fella into cohabiting with me again and they get to be introduced to my bizarre..."home habits", let's call them.
One of my home habits is talking to my cats.
Okay, and sometimes I sing to them.
...and sometimes I sing songs about them, to them.
Here is a song I just composed for my elder cat, Mouse. I had just let him into the utility closet where the water boiler is, so he can make sure it is free of mice and other vermin.
Mouse the mouser
Hunting mice!
He's gonna put them all on ice!
Hunting them down!
Making them pay!
He's gonna keep all the mice far away!
If possible, try to imagine it sung to a corrupted version of the tune to the Speed Racer theme song.
One of my home habits is talking to my cats.
Okay, and sometimes I sing to them.
...and sometimes I sing songs about them, to them.
Here is a song I just composed for my elder cat, Mouse. I had just let him into the utility closet where the water boiler is, so he can make sure it is free of mice and other vermin.
Mouse the mouser
Hunting mice!
He's gonna put them all on ice!
Hunting them down!
Making them pay!
He's gonna keep all the mice far away!
If possible, try to imagine it sung to a corrupted version of the tune to the Speed Racer theme song.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Ah, Yes. My Reputation Precedes Me...
As you can probably tell, I haven't really narrowed my focus yet. I'm pretty much blogging about whatever I feel like in the vain hope that somebody will think it is interesting and perhaps I will get a comment or a fourth follower. That last blog really should have been a tweet, but it's in the past now. I'm going to tell one of my better stories now.
Something you might not know about me is that before I had a real job, I used to follow bands on their tours, or at least drive stupid distances to see them. One band that I did this for a lot is Locksley.
I met Locksley in the fall of 2007 when they were opening for...another band (more on that in another blog). I went to seven or eight shows on that tour, and at some point I met the guys from Locksley and hung out at their merch table enough that they were forced to remember me. Myspace was still relevant back then (side note: it's kind of unbelievable how fast Myspace became irrelevant?), and after the tour ended I traded a few messages with their bass player on there and we developed a bit of a friendship.
At some point after the tour I'd met them on, I'd seen them maybe once or twice since then playing one-off gigs in New York City. I somehow ended up with the bassist's phone number, which only served to further my obsession and fuel my desire to see their gigs.
I was living in the middle of Pennsylvania at the time. So, you know:
(Click to embiggen)
I should qualify that I actually did this all the time back then, sometimes even longer distances, for other bands besides Locksley. But still.
At some point in the winter of 2007-2008, they announced a one-off gig in New York at a venue called the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, which is kind of like an upscale Luau-themed Hooters on Times Square. The cover that night was just $10 and included a complimentary drink, so I reasoned that the $80 I would spend in gas was totally worth it. I didn't know how right I would turn out to be.
I arrived at the gig early. I got a metered parking space on the street immediately outside of the venue. (In Times. Fucking. Square. I have this uncanny ability to find legal street parking in places where you shouldn't be able to. Taylor Swift got her voice; I got this.) I went inside and began consuming my free beer. I was nervous because I had sent a text message to the bassist earlier in the week saying I was coming and he hadn't responded, probably because he didn't really care, but rather than consider apathy, I was worried he might have been mad at me for some inexplicable reason. When I am nervous, especially about social situations, I have a tendency to...get really drunk.
To make a long story less long, I had the luck to sit down next to a guy who was traveling on business and whose company was comping all his expenses, including alcohol. We got to chatting and he ordered me another drink or four. I don't really remember. Also, somewhere in the middle there, Locksley showed up and found me at the bar to say hello. The bassist offered to bring me one of their free beers from backstage. Just as they were about to take the stage, I ordered an extra drink before rushing to the front of a crowd of maybe 15 people with two drinks in hand. I'd had something like eight drinks or more all told, in a span of maybe three hours.
The rest of the night is something of a blur. I took something like 96 photos of their 30 minute set. (Later, when I was trying to understand what was going on in the photos, a girl I met online who had been in that crowd of 15 with me informed me that in the middle of the set, the power went out and the band led the crowd in a singalong of the Star-Spangled Banner. I have no memory of this whatsoever.) I'm fairly certain that the other 14 people in the crowd hated me and I probably spilled beer on all of them and scream-sang in all their ears, though I was unaware of it at the time. I'm only assuming this because that's what drunks do. I vaguely remember going to a bathroom in the basement, presumably after their set was over, and vomiting and getting vomit on my scarf. There was also a prolonged exchange where I sat with the bassist and kept trying to compliment him on the largeness of his eyes while he vigorously denied having large eyes.
At some point, the entire venue was empty and everyone was leaving and I was far too wasted to even contemplate driving. My car was parked out front (in my rockstar parking space) and there were of course parking restrictions in the morning. I also drove a stick shift, which nobody really knew how to drive!
Finally, one of the crew who lived in Brooklyn volunteered to drive me and my car to his house and let me sleep in his apartment. If only my mom could see me now! Getting tucked into my passenger seat by a big-eyed bass player and handing the keys to a complete stranger whose qualifications amounted to "ability to drive stick shift" and willingly going back to his home in Brooklyn without anyone I knew!
Did I also mention above that I had class at 11am the next day? And I was giving a presentation in it? And it was a 4.5-hour drive back? Because those were all true things.
I don't really remember much about the rest of the night. The guy did not rape me and gave me a blanket and a couch. I threw up in his bathroom probably multiple times during the night, and then left at about 6am without waking him and somehow navigated my way (WITHOUT a GPS) out of New York and back home.
I pulled into the school parking lot at 10:40am, with just enough time to catch the shuttle to campus and get to class on time to give an outstanding presentation on Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft before going directly home and sleeping for six hours.
EPILOGUE: More than a year later, I was following Locksley on yet another tour. At a show in Philadelphia, I was re-introduced to their manager. He looked at me for a second, and then I saw recognition flicker in his eyes. I thought it was because I had been to so many shows, but no. "You're the girl who got really wasted at Little Stephen's Underground Garage!" he exclaimed.
Something you might not know about me is that before I had a real job, I used to follow bands on their tours, or at least drive stupid distances to see them. One band that I did this for a lot is Locksley.
I met Locksley in the fall of 2007 when they were opening for...another band (more on that in another blog). I went to seven or eight shows on that tour, and at some point I met the guys from Locksley and hung out at their merch table enough that they were forced to remember me. Myspace was still relevant back then (side note: it's kind of unbelievable how fast Myspace became irrelevant?), and after the tour ended I traded a few messages with their bass player on there and we developed a bit of a friendship.
At some point after the tour I'd met them on, I'd seen them maybe once or twice since then playing one-off gigs in New York City. I somehow ended up with the bassist's phone number, which only served to further my obsession and fuel my desire to see their gigs.
I was living in the middle of Pennsylvania at the time. So, you know:
I should qualify that I actually did this all the time back then, sometimes even longer distances, for other bands besides Locksley. But still.
At some point in the winter of 2007-2008, they announced a one-off gig in New York at a venue called the Hawaiian Tropic Zone, which is kind of like an upscale Luau-themed Hooters on Times Square. The cover that night was just $10 and included a complimentary drink, so I reasoned that the $80 I would spend in gas was totally worth it. I didn't know how right I would turn out to be.
I arrived at the gig early. I got a metered parking space on the street immediately outside of the venue. (In Times. Fucking. Square. I have this uncanny ability to find legal street parking in places where you shouldn't be able to. Taylor Swift got her voice; I got this.) I went inside and began consuming my free beer. I was nervous because I had sent a text message to the bassist earlier in the week saying I was coming and he hadn't responded, probably because he didn't really care, but rather than consider apathy, I was worried he might have been mad at me for some inexplicable reason. When I am nervous, especially about social situations, I have a tendency to...get really drunk.
To make a long story less long, I had the luck to sit down next to a guy who was traveling on business and whose company was comping all his expenses, including alcohol. We got to chatting and he ordered me another drink or four. I don't really remember. Also, somewhere in the middle there, Locksley showed up and found me at the bar to say hello. The bassist offered to bring me one of their free beers from backstage. Just as they were about to take the stage, I ordered an extra drink before rushing to the front of a crowd of maybe 15 people with two drinks in hand. I'd had something like eight drinks or more all told, in a span of maybe three hours.
The rest of the night is something of a blur. I took something like 96 photos of their 30 minute set. (Later, when I was trying to understand what was going on in the photos, a girl I met online who had been in that crowd of 15 with me informed me that in the middle of the set, the power went out and the band led the crowd in a singalong of the Star-Spangled Banner. I have no memory of this whatsoever.) I'm fairly certain that the other 14 people in the crowd hated me and I probably spilled beer on all of them and scream-sang in all their ears, though I was unaware of it at the time. I'm only assuming this because that's what drunks do. I vaguely remember going to a bathroom in the basement, presumably after their set was over, and vomiting and getting vomit on my scarf. There was also a prolonged exchange where I sat with the bassist and kept trying to compliment him on the largeness of his eyes while he vigorously denied having large eyes.
At some point, the entire venue was empty and everyone was leaving and I was far too wasted to even contemplate driving. My car was parked out front (in my rockstar parking space) and there were of course parking restrictions in the morning. I also drove a stick shift, which nobody really knew how to drive!
Finally, one of the crew who lived in Brooklyn volunteered to drive me and my car to his house and let me sleep in his apartment. If only my mom could see me now! Getting tucked into my passenger seat by a big-eyed bass player and handing the keys to a complete stranger whose qualifications amounted to "ability to drive stick shift" and willingly going back to his home in Brooklyn without anyone I knew!
Did I also mention above that I had class at 11am the next day? And I was giving a presentation in it? And it was a 4.5-hour drive back? Because those were all true things.
I don't really remember much about the rest of the night. The guy did not rape me and gave me a blanket and a couch. I threw up in his bathroom probably multiple times during the night, and then left at about 6am without waking him and somehow navigated my way (WITHOUT a GPS) out of New York and back home.
I pulled into the school parking lot at 10:40am, with just enough time to catch the shuttle to campus and get to class on time to give an outstanding presentation on Max Weber's Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft before going directly home and sleeping for six hours.
EPILOGUE: More than a year later, I was following Locksley on yet another tour. At a show in Philadelphia, I was re-introduced to their manager. He looked at me for a second, and then I saw recognition flicker in his eyes. I thought it was because I had been to so many shows, but no. "You're the girl who got really wasted at Little Stephen's Underground Garage!" he exclaimed.
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