When I hear my alarm go off in the pitch blackness of 6am (I know, right. Summer's ghost haunts me every morning I wake up and see the sky a little bit darker and darker...) I usually try to wake my brain up with some good old fashion phone time. Honestly, I know we all do it, and I also know it's probably not the best way to wake up by teaching my brain that the thing it really needs to be functional again is to stare at a screen -- but that's for another post!
This morning during my half-conscious facebook browsing I came across an article that was posted. A typical bullet-style piece detailing the "3 Ways We Can End Fake Relationships Forever." From the title alone, it looks like this article has every cure we've ever dreamed of for our relationship ails! And on the whole, I think the article is right in a lot of ways. As I read through it with bleary eyes I felt comforted by the truths I couldn't yet articulate so well. And for those of you who have not stopped to read the article yet, or if you simply don't plan to, I can sum up the piece by saying that, basically, this "truth" is that true love is not selfish and self-serving. And if you find yourself being in a relationship simply for your own comfort or sense of status, then you should reevaluate your feelings and motives.
I like that. But what I don't like is how impossible this translates into the hearts of humans. I have yet to meet a single person in my life that has come anywhere close to mastering pure, selfless, Godly love. So screw you, easy bullet points of truth, because you've only told me what the unattainable ideal is without acknowledging how hard it is to get there! And not only that, but part of me is attached to the juiciness of life that comes from the messy, selfish, angry bits of love. It would be pretty damn boring to just go along with everything that your love "thought was right for them" because you loved them in a truly selfless way. In fact, it'd only be boring on a good day, on most days it'd be excruciating to put up with.
Love is a partnership, a bond together, an ethereal agreement. Even the love that you have for yourself is this way. Who is loving whom when you show love to yourself? As singular as one mind in one body looks in the physical form, inwardly there is a constant watching and examining of seemingly separate parts working as one. So even with self-love, there is a natural give and take, maybe even a bit of darkness and a bit of light.
So how can two people agree to love each other completely selflessly without also hurting themselves in the process? ... Maybe hurt just is the process? The hurt your ego feels through being exposed to the unpredictable will of another person might be just the thing you need to wake up and realize that it's not really about you in the love agreement. Your personal comfort and fear of losing [fill in the blank] are not what's important to the love you create outside of yourself that is much bigger than you. (And not only is it bigger than you, but it's stronger than you, can outrun you and will most certainly outlast your mental will even when you've cursed love to die in your most dark and sinful moments.) Love agreements are amazing because despite seeming irrational to the human mind at times, we adopt them anyway and are taken in crazy directions that we never knew we'd go, all for the sake of experiencing much more growth and adventure than the love we harbor for ourselves could provide.
Anyway, I have no idea what I'm doing in relationships, really. But it's only very recently that I'd be willing to admit that. I think allowing ourselves to get entangled in deep love that's messy, unpredictable and oftentimes painful is possibly the first step, a test if you will, towards being truly selfless. For me it is anyway. Because when I take the pressure off of myself to be so perfect with love in every way (just in order to feel deserving of love) I allow others to do the same.
