July 30, 2008
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I often wonder why. There are a lot of things that take up time but don’t lead to anything tangible. So what’s the point? Travel strikes me as one. You see new places, take pictures, ahd have fun, but then you’re back and it’s mostly forgotten. You resume your daily life just as it was before. Vacation in general seems a bit overrated as a way of making things better. You run away from your regular life but when you come back you’re faced with the same problems, same worries, and same insecurities as before. It does help you reset, like a release valve that allows pent up stress to escape. But it’s not a long term solution, for when you return things start to build up again. Releasing the pressure isn’t good because it let’s you continue on without ever confronting the underlying problem.
Another why is why try to be friends with someone after you learn that a relationship with them isn’t meant to be? It seems like a reciepe for torturing yourself. It’s an opportunity to be around the person, which gives you pleasure even if it is secret. It is illusory, though, and that secret prevents it from being a real friendship and probably prevents you from ever being capable of real friendship with that person. Another alternative is shunning the person, which seems unsatisfactory too. So you are left in the awakward position of acquaintenceship.
How do you come to the realization that it isn’t meant to be? Sometimes it is just a feeling. Pessimism and lack of self-confidence skew perception and make it difficult to know whether that feeling reflects reality. Yet it seems hopeless: how could it possibly be; it has never worked out before so why should this be any different; is it even an option; if it were an option are there complications that would nix the deal. Sometimes making the first move is simply not an option due to external constraints. Those constraints can be convenient to someone already disinclined to make the first move.
A relationship is the one thing in life that I can see a clear answer to the question “why is this desirable.” Going anywhere is better when you’re part of a pair. Someone to talk to at intermission, make conversation with over a meal, be a partner in crime on excursions as varies as trips to the beach or the supermarket (or even a vacation!). Love isn’t just a romantic ideal; it’s functional.
Which is not to say there is no place for being alone. Just not all the time and for all of your life.
Comments (2)
when you read your books, do you not escape? the point of traveling is to experience and learn about other cultures and how they live. it allows you to step out of your comfort zone and consider that the world is much larger than anything your computer can offer. It will teach you about yourself if you let it.
Coming back to the same thing does happen though. But you would have to anyhow. Avoiding problems or waiting them out doesn’t solve them either. And it’s best to take a vacation when you have reached a point of a problem or obstacle solved. If you keep drudging through something you might not see how to solve it. Just like writers block if you step away or think about something else when you return you usually see a path.
I have learned that you should never approach a relationship with one foot already out the door. If you walk into something with the sense that you will need to leave at some point, then realize that you are already leaving. If you like someone, enjoy every moment you spend with them and stop trying to label it. If your feelings are that strong, say something. Saying nothing is what makes it awkward. And at least you will know where you stand with them. If the feelings are mutual, great! If not, then you can consider if friendship is possible. But avoidance amongst friends only brews resentment.
Cannot travel also be means for untying those knots and patterns of our lives, rather than escaping? Seeing new cultures or work or feeling the lay of a strange continent may allow a new perspective to be found. A person only escapes if they desire to, but a vacation may also provide a reprieve with where one can step out of ingrained patterns with the intent on seeing them better, discover new feelings that become keys to understanding out own lives.
I have hiker friends who go on long journeys that become great struggles to continue on. They find that despite being away from their daily lives their patterns come out intensely and must be answered. True, not all travel gives us time to reflect, but it can.
Agreed on relationships. Sometimes a kink just won’t go away, and oft the tendency is to quietly ignore it rather than discussing it. But then there’s something between you that blocks openness, disallows that clean connection for us to settle smoothly into and relax with. Only for all we ignore it the kink doesn’t go away, but gets worse. Some tiny core part of who we both are is in conflict and its very nature requires it to creep into our relationships and test them. If we can’t both recognize and face this, maybe even discovering how to laugh about it, perhaps we fail this test and can only let it slowly fade.
Yes, having a person by your side provides such joy for which to rejoice at being alive! It’s just a balance, I suppose, to stay within ourselves and not be pulled into the other person or people, like I was in hs. Like two trees growing side by side, each with intermingled roots and branches, sharing the same, air, rain, water, offering protection and companionship. Yet also each with roots and branches reaching out the opposite way, pulling up new reserves of water for the sharing, reaching up and filling out their own bit of the sky too.