The Hardest Part, part 2.

I was listening to one of my favorite songs, the Hardest Part, by Coldplay, and reflecting on how it had been my anthem for a little over a year...until now.

The Hardest Part speaks to me about how hard letting another person go is. Saying goodbye as they leave your life that they filled so full of love and joy...even though you might try to fight to get them to stay in your life somehow. They were your silver lining on the cloud, and now they're gone, and you can't figure it out or what it's all about. It's the hardest part of life.

...And then again, maybe the reason I had been so upset over the last few years at college is that there was no breath of fresh air. No sweeping in of new people in the front door of my world. Only a few, here and there, but I would be so eager to welcome them I'd ruin it for both of us. They would come into my world and I would make them my whole world...even done tactfully so that I wouldn't overwhelm them like a clingy borderline person, somehow even if they were my whole world in spirit it would still be ruined.

And here I am. New city, new job, new life. I'm happy as I can never recall being. My life has new dignity that I never knew I needed from working for my pay, it has new excitement and adventure from being in a new place with new people. And learning new things about God! I didn't realize how much my faith life had been stagnating from being in a community that remained the same age while I got older!

There's just one thing that's...odd.

It feels like I've known these people before. Even as I've been writing about new aspects of my life, there's something that feels distinctly the same. Every person I meet reminds me strongly of someone else...sometimes I know who that person is, and sometimes it's only that I feel déjà vu when I see them.

It's an odd new cognitive dissonance. On the one hand I feel like everyone I meet is so unique and unlike anything I've ever experienced...a new universe to get to know! It's so exciting! Limitless potential to explore the life and experiences of another person...as soon as we know each other well enough, I guess. Then on the other hand, it feels like I already know everything about them. Is this a counselor thing? Is this my intuition gone wild?

Maybe I'm just imagining things.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream that the hardest part was over.

On being foolish.

There's nothing like making the same mistake twice to humble you. And making the same mistake multiple times...

I am grateful this morning for the lack of nightmares. That much, at least, is different from the last time something very similar to this happened. I had nightmares for a long time. Since then, I have more or less made mistakes of a lesser extent, but similar manner, and now I have once again committed a huge blunder of the magnitude of...well, before I started writing this blog.

I have told myself in the past that I have learned a lot since I began this blog, but it seems I have not learned nearly as much as I supposed.

Like, for instance, that the more you tighten your grip on something hoped for the more quickly and easily it slips through your fingers. Like how to take people at their word rather than fantasizing about what they really mean. That last one is a surprise. That was something I was proud of knowing...or "knowing." It seems I don't really know it at all.

There is this much, at least: I know now that my problems really have been all my fault for a very long time. I hope I do not soon forget how foolish I have really been all this time. No, my ignorance is bared forth so powerfully today that I can no longer deny it. I am powerless against my own desire for love and affection, and it is destroying my ability to have it. No one...no one wants to love a person who needs it. I do not speak here of the friendship love, or the love of affection, or the love of a Christian to his neighbor. I speak of the love of self-gift. It is precisely because someone does not need us, in this kind of love, that we wish to give ourselves completely to them.

The problem is I don't know what to do. I have done many different things now, and I have had a great share of hope in things to come, and now again while I was trying to rectify my mistakes I incidentally made them again.

My foolishness will not be coming to an end anytime soon. I can only stumble around in the dark, hoping that somehow I finally find the light switch and turn it on so I can finally get out.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for an end to my foolishness.

The longest lesson in a song.

Phoenix, a band I like, came out with a new album. All of their songs are pretty upbeat, but one in particular has really grabbed my attention...so of course I had to look up the lyrics.

I think this song represents for me the life lesson that has taken me the longest to learn. I'm not sure if I've actually talked about this "lesson" in my blog yet. Here's how I interpreted the song, and you'll see my lesson.

Just don't bother
Don't fed the animals
Don't let them run in circles

Don't be told
They just don't matter

If you're more than ready, run away
From dusk to dawn

Bad situations become worse when you feed them. If people are being unreasonable or are crossing lines with you, you can let them run in circles on their own and leave.

Last night on the couch you're livid
It's a poor complaint
It's the only thing
You're sad and underweight

You can be upset and withdrawn and self-pitying...but that never solves anything. Ever.

Whatever, we're so close to "serious"
Whatever promise you made
I have no problem to say "no"

Often when people become emotionally involved with one another, it can become a tense situation where things are more serious than either party is willing to commit. Sometimes we say things we can't really fulfill ("we're destined to be together forever") and you have to be able to say "no" for the best of both of you.

I'll never know
I'll never know you
Restrained
Reach out for me
I'll never know you if you don't

We'll never understand each other if we don't communicate. We'll never really know one another as well as one can know oneself, but being open with one another is the only way to even get close.

It's just another
It's just another complicated case
To settle down the road
Whatever we're too close to "serious"
Whatever promise you made
From dusk to dawn

Being in relationship with other people, if you are doing it in a meaningful way, can get complicated...to the point where if it's your habit it might happen a lot. Still, you have to be able to settle it at some point.

Don't swear that it is your fault
You're sophisticated
I saw the chandelier
I'm foreign and under stress
Whatever we're too close to "serious"
Whatever comments you make
I hear the rattle to say "no"

In any situation between two people, there is liability for what happened on both sides. It's useless to denigrate yourself. All one can do is one's very best...no one can ask for more.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for an infusion of music to learn from.

The pay-off.

In human action and interaction, there is rarely, if ever, any sort of arbitrariness. There is always a "point" to it...something I am trying to "get" or "achieve."

It is a dangerous business to always go through life without examining what kind of pay-off I am trying to get from my actions. "What is the point of what I'm doing?" I must ask if I truly wish to be a person of virtue.

I have become aware, recently, of how lax I have been in checking myself for these pay-offs. I thank God that I know I'm being an arrogant fool sometimes. It comes out in a few of these posts. While it may be true I feel like a Jedi when I counsel people, I think it is true I tell people so not for any reason other than because I want their approval, which is a very silly reason. If I am to be someone who only cares how God judges me, that's not really the way to go about it.

Even while I am being more vigilant in my awareness of why I am doing what I'm doing I know that I must have blind spots. This is why I have decided I need to make sure I am getting plenty of virtuous friendships. The path to righteousness was never intended, I believe, to be taken alone. This is why I am very grateful for the friendship of a man I will refer to as G.

G and I only met this year, and I must say at first I was a bit annoyed at him. Not because I didn't appreciate his sense of humor and found him a bore, but because I was so unused to not having to work to make friends with someone that I found it almost irritating. But I am grateful I decided to throw this aside and give it a shot. G is a great Catholic man, and even though he seems awkward and timid to the unobservant, in reality he is definitely not afraid to ask me the tough questions. "Do you think you're reading too much into it?" He asked the other day as I told him a guy-to-guy story. I thought briefly and answered "yes" because of course I was.

I appreciated this probably more than I let on to G, because I need friends like him to alert me to my blind spots. Someone to sharpen my iron, to use the Pauline phrase. I know I can count on G to help me grow in virtue, because I can tell that even more than he likes to have fun with me, I know he wants to grow closer to Christ, and help me in that, too.

G is, of course, not the only virtuous friendship I have. I could mention a few others, some of whom are probably my readers (I believe there are about 8 people who regularly keep up with this blog in any regular fashion, and I have perhaps indulgently assumed these are my closest associates). However, G is a great example of what I hope to have more of. I find I am increasingly less interested in idle amusement in my friendships, and more and more interested in learning something from them. This is what attracts me most to a person: their wisdom that I so desperately need!

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a virtuous pay-off.

On changing my mind.

Reflect on this: if you were perfect, you would never change your mind.

Past posts have been getting a lot of views these past few weeks, and because of the subject matter, I believe I know why.

I've expressed strong opinions about the stages of my life, but yet as I go on I find that although many of my ideas remain the same, some of them I change. I do this because I grow. I'm imperfect.

A year ago, I would have told you that I am often ruled by my emotions. These days, though, I find I've relaxed in that matter. I am in touch with my emotions...I feel them, I experience them, I know them intimately. But instead of acting on them, or letting them affect me, I can choose to let them flow through me. I've mellowed out.

In the same way, I look back on the things I've said about "where I am" and "what I'm doing" and think less seriously of my opinions at those times than I once did. I've learned since then. I am not quite so sure of myself.

Knowledge is how much you know. Wisdom, I believe, is knowing what you don't know. And I've gotten a little more wise.

I find now that I recognize more and more how little I really know and can know. Case in point: my last post about crushes. A year ago I would have never written such a post. I took crushes far too seriously to write such a thing. Now I know them for what they really are: the body's way of pointing out to you interesting women (and also, for those like me who are interested in being single for a while, at least, a damned nuisance).

People who never make assumptions and ask lots of questions are, in my opinion, the wisest people you will ever meet. If you ever make friends with such a person, don't ever take them for granted. I find they are rarer and rarer in our world these days. I hope to be one someday, and I think I'm headed in that direction.

Now, to take my own advice...

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a wiser world.