(no subject)

This morning, I ate the last little square of the the two chocolate bars that danaeris bought for me in Toronto. One was a Lindt cherry-chili bar, and the toerh was Soma's "Darkfire", a 66% dark bar with chili, cinnamon, ginger, and other spices. Mmm, they were so good. And they made me think of the sweet person who gave them to me.

(no subject)

An LJ friend, mai_neh, posted these words some time back. He got them from elsewhere himself, so I'm afraid I can't credit them beyond that. I've meant for a while to post them with my own commentary. That commentary follows the below lines.

I promise to love people and things that are not you.

I will not let my fear of losing you stop me from seeking out new adventure.

I will intentionally make plans that do not involve you. I will support you in doing the same. I will do my best to manage my feelings of fear, exclusion, and jealousy in a healthy way.

I will make time for honest introspection. I will set goals for myself. I will engage in behaviors that will help me achieve those goals.

I promise to say no sometimes, even when it will disappoint you.

When I am wrong, I will admit it. I will apologize, I will tell you how I am going to change the behavior, and then I will follow through.

And when I am unhappy with YOUR behavior, and I've taken the time to make sure it is about you and not me, I will tell you.

And I need you to know, if our connection ceases to be a positive, growth-promoting, loving relationship and can't be repaired, I will break up with you.

When I was 20, more than ten years ago now, I had a very romanticized view of romance. Well, I still do. But it's a very different romanticism now. Then, at 20, before I'd ever experienced a relationship, I saw a romantic partnership as something that I would, should, do anything for. It was a view informed by societal convention. Pop culture and media extol it. For me, much of it came from the romances in sci-fi and fantasy novels. (I'll admit it; I used to think the Xanth novels were so romantic. I'm a little scared to read them again....) When I was deeply lonely in high school, I would tell myself what a good partner I would be, if only the right person found me. I daydreamed of finding the one true person with whom to share my life. Around whom I would shape my day-to-day existence. To whose side I would not hesitate to travel to a new personal world, giving up the known and familiar for the magic of love.

I did that, and it was a wonderful experience that I learned a lot from.

However, if I were shaping a child's world view regarding relationships, I would discourage that understanding of love. I believe that placing romantic relationships on a pedestal from which they trump other concerns leads to a lot of unhappiness. I love, and I love fully, in the belief and knowledge that my relationships are necessarily temporal phenomena. I can't know what will happen in the future. When I move for grad school, my relationships will change. I hope and believe they will be sustained, but they will be different. In the same way, I am always changing and becoming a different person. I could elect to stay here in Kenosha and prioritize my partners above advancing my personal goals, but neither I nor they would want me to do that. It's also possible that, someday in the future, one of my partners or I will find that our relationship is not making us happy, and the situation cannot be resolved. Again, my relationship would change or end.

I believe in the possibility of having a life-partner who is with me until the death of one or the other of us. But I don't want any partners I may have, or myself, to feel trapped in a relationship that is not fulfilling our goals and desires. For me, being conscious of the finite nature of relationships makes the ones I'm in very special. I try to appreciate them fully, because they may not last forever, and this moment will never come again. This is my romanticized view of relationships. They are precious and irreplaceable and should be treasured for what they are. Like Richard Feynman's comment about the nature of flowers, I think an analytical view of phenomena like relationships does not take away any beauty or magic. Rather, in looking under the surface, appreciating their fragility and finite nature, they become, if anything, even more sacred.

I would encourage people to view relationships as precious rarities. I would encourage them to not view relationships as claims on their partners' time or love; things which should be freely given. There's some sadness in that I suppose. There's a deep appeal in seeing love as a spark of otherworldly perfection; as something that exists in a special place outside of human experience. In seeing your soulmate as an avatar, the embodied form of a concept beyond rational reality, the bond with whom transcends the restrictions that circumscribe the rest of this existence. Perhaps we would lose that beautiful, terrible, irrationally joyous, soul-crushing experience of immersive love. But I don't think so. For me, love has every bit as much potential to make my heart sing in the heavens, or to destroy my soul.

But I will try not to use love as an excuse for exerting claims of ownership over my partners, or aspects of their lives. I will care, deeply, about my partners' needs, goals, and dreams and encourage them to follow them, even if that means our relationship will end or change. I will do my best to not let my needs, goals, and dreams serve as barriers to my partners fulfilling theirs; not without full, informed discussion about how to prioritize those in our individual lives, as well as in our relationship together. My partners and I should have the freedom to decide, on our own as well as together, how to find fulfillment in our lives rather than be subordinate to a reified concept of eternal love that may only exist in fantasy. Reality is such a beautiful, mystical thing already.