Amor, plague of all artists, has visited me today. Thank God, he didn't come by way of powerful lust, nor even dream or imagination. He is squeezing the heart of a young friend of mine, who has fallen in love with a -- truly -- unattainable man. This guy is married, and a cad to boot. But Magda thinks the world of him, in her doe-eyed way.
So I sit her down and tell her the basic facts: that the Soul, in its sometimes questionable wisdom, wants her to see something that -- truly -- does not belong to this guy but instead belongs to her. "He's just a guy," I tell her. "What you are really in love with is some magificent hidden part of you, some priceless jewel, something you do not see in yourself. Instead you see it in him and love it there. He is not even what you imagine. There is just a little hook, a tiny bit of the jewel over there. You are the real possessor of it. You have to pull it back in, see it in yourself."
Of course she does not get this. In our culture of romantic love, love at first sight, love that must at all costs be consumated, this understanding is not common coin. Even, she tells me, if she got this, what good would it do her? Her feelings are still overpowering. She yearns for this guy with all her heart.
"You don't yearn for the guy," I remind her. "You yearn for whatever you are imagining him to be. You don't even know him. Feelings are just things. They can be suffered."
"Write endlessly in your journal," I tell her. "Especially, allow yourself to feel the grief and the anger that you cannot have what you want. Talk to me. Talk to all your other friends. Do not under any circumstances talk to (the guy) about it. Try to see what your love for him might be calling you to bring to birth in yourself."
She looks hurt. The world I am offering her is a cold place. She doesn't see how beautiful it will be when she recognizes her own truth burning in her own soul. She would much rather throw herself off a bridge. And yet I know this learning. I can stake my life on this learning. I know it with all the certainty of foolish failure as well as that of triumphant success.
"Amor," I plead after she has left, "can't you take that barb back out of her heart? Don't you know there's no context for this unrequited love thing any more?"
He smiles at me. He has become over the years a dear, if difficult, friend. His still small voice blooms in the center of my head. "And what would she be then? Trouble waiting to happen. A deer in the hunter's sights. Next time she will not have you to help her out. And the man she falls in love with will not be quite so unavailable."
I feel my brows drawing together in Teutonic obstinance. I start to speak, but he forestalls me.
"You think too much sometimes," he advises. "Go paint something." And with that the bane of all artists is gone.
Celebrating Incremental Victories
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6 comments:
Like my wake up call from a soap opera -
you don't want to marry him - you want to BE him!
Exactly!!
In my experience, unattainable love is good for writing poetry, attainable love smothers poetry- hence the preponderance of songs and poems and stories about unattained love.
Yes, so often true!
Sometimes unattainable love, or looking for and finding love in all the wrong places, as the case may be, is about a call to be in touch with a side of ourselves to which we have been blind or towards which we obstinately refuse to turn. I speak (from experience) of how we sometimes are so wrapped up in what we believe to be important that we overlook and forego the truly important things in life -- like choosing career over relationships, which was the situation in my case. And if we are truly obstinate and thick-skulled, then we have to be hit by something truly preposterous for it to even grab our attention. Just a thought.
How I wish I'd had someone to give me such words of wisdom when in the throes of unrequited love. Mind you I may well not have listened and simply given an anguish cry of "you don't understand".
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