Growing up, I was afraid to look a beautiful woman in the eyes. I still am, actually.
Part of me is afraid I will look in her eyes and see her laughing at what she sees. Another part of me is afraid I will look in her eyes and realize she doesn't even see me.
I don't know where that fear comes from. It has no basis in fact or reality, nor can I say looking into a beautiful woman's eyes is dangerous, for me or any other man. I've been so afraid to do it, so I can't say this fear is based on some lived-out experience. I can say that when I was younger I often did see disgust and disbelief on the face of a pretty woman when I asked her out on a date.
But then that is the problem with fear, isn't it? It usually has no basis in experience or reality. What is prejudice but a form of fear? And yet most prejudiced people I know have had no real-life experience with those they fear. If they did, then maybe I could understand the fear.
When I was in high school, I got mugged in the park by a group of Hispanic teens. That experience could have prejudiced me against Hispanics or given me an overgrown fear of them. But it did not. I do not know why it did not, it just didn't.
So where do our fears come from? Why, for example, might a woman fear men as much as I fear looking into the eyes of a beautiful woman? She has good reason for her fear, having been abandoned by an abusive father and then disrespected and abused by so many men since then, including a controlling and overbearing spouse. And yet her fear of men may well have driven into just such a relationship because she was afraid to open up to a man, to be vulnerable to a man, to truly love a man.
So what can we do to keep our fears from ruling our lives and keeping us from those who truly love us?
Sometimes it takes just one person to break through the walls of fear and give love a chance. Sometimes it takes just one moment of courage to stand up to a fear and, in doing so, diminish it in the light of a new day.
Sometimes it just takes a single, brave individual to make a life-altering change, to reach away from fear and toward love, to put fear in its place.
Monday, November 26, 2012
Saturday, November 17, 2012
A LONELY ROAD
At some point in life, you realize the road ahead is shorter than the pavement already covered. You don't know how much shorter, just that it must be.
At that point, life takes on a different shape and meaning. You realize it has far less to do with things and achievements and more about sharing what little time is left with the people or person who is/are most important to you. Oh, you still may put in long hours in order to keep your job, to earn a raise or to simply shorten the time to retirement, but it is far less about some grand goal to become, say, president of the company and more about staving off the rumors that you've lost a step or that you are just coasting to retirement. Or it may just be necessary in these days of management squeezing every last second of productivity out of the workforce, sometimes just before laying them all off and sending the work to some far-off foreign land.
But you aren't doing it with your eyes on some mountaintop goal, some high accomplishment. In fact, you can't wait to get out of there and get back to the one(s) you love.
For some of us, however, that also is not achievable, because the one we love is not there. And that leaves these years, and that road that stretches out before us, just one long and lonely highway, devoid of any sights worth seeing or experiences worth having. Because by this time, we've learned that very little in life is worth a thing if you cannot share it with the one(s) you love. All it does is leave you one step beyond that pathetic co-worker who always comes to work and tells you, in agonizing detail, about his/her weekend, as if you were their very best friend in all of the world. Because, at least for them, you are. In fact, you probably are their only friend in all of the world, or at least the only person willing to listen to their incessant babbling.
You can't pour yourself into your work for that is a hollow, bottomless pit. And you have no reason to go home, for that, too, is an empty, hollow shell. All that is left for you is to be that loner, that person for whom company is rare, the one who must find solace, comfort and companionship with themselves. And accept that this is your lot in life for the years and, if you are unlucky, decades to come.
You can take some solace in this one fact: At least the road ahead is going to be shorter than the solitary, sad road you've already traveled.
At that point, life takes on a different shape and meaning. You realize it has far less to do with things and achievements and more about sharing what little time is left with the people or person who is/are most important to you. Oh, you still may put in long hours in order to keep your job, to earn a raise or to simply shorten the time to retirement, but it is far less about some grand goal to become, say, president of the company and more about staving off the rumors that you've lost a step or that you are just coasting to retirement. Or it may just be necessary in these days of management squeezing every last second of productivity out of the workforce, sometimes just before laying them all off and sending the work to some far-off foreign land.
But you aren't doing it with your eyes on some mountaintop goal, some high accomplishment. In fact, you can't wait to get out of there and get back to the one(s) you love.
For some of us, however, that also is not achievable, because the one we love is not there. And that leaves these years, and that road that stretches out before us, just one long and lonely highway, devoid of any sights worth seeing or experiences worth having. Because by this time, we've learned that very little in life is worth a thing if you cannot share it with the one(s) you love. All it does is leave you one step beyond that pathetic co-worker who always comes to work and tells you, in agonizing detail, about his/her weekend, as if you were their very best friend in all of the world. Because, at least for them, you are. In fact, you probably are their only friend in all of the world, or at least the only person willing to listen to their incessant babbling.
You can't pour yourself into your work for that is a hollow, bottomless pit. And you have no reason to go home, for that, too, is an empty, hollow shell. All that is left for you is to be that loner, that person for whom company is rare, the one who must find solace, comfort and companionship with themselves. And accept that this is your lot in life for the years and, if you are unlucky, decades to come.
You can take some solace in this one fact: At least the road ahead is going to be shorter than the solitary, sad road you've already traveled.
Friday, November 9, 2012
DON'T LOVE ALONE
There are things you must do alone.
We are alone, more or less, when we are born. We are alone when we die. We are alone when we start school. We are alone when we step out into the working world.
Then there are things we choose to do alone. Some run alone. Others read alone. Many write alone. Some live alone, by choice. I like to bike alone, to work out alone, to think on my own, alone.
Some things, however, cannot be done alone. The greatest of these is love. You cannot love alone. You might think you can, that you can love someone who does not love you back, that you can have this relationship where one person loves and the other does not, but time will prove that this simply does not and cannot work.
It takes two to tango and two to love. Yes, you each may have, from time to time, varying depth and strength of love, the love may be more unconditional for one than for the other, or may be more accepting and forgiving with one than with another, but you both must love for the relationship to have any hope, any future. If just one of you loves, then this is going nowhere.
This means risking love by admitting your love to someone, by putting yourself out there, taking a chance on love, with the real possibility that you will be doing this alone and, therefore, be ultimately rejected.
In which case you will, once again, be alone. But you won't truly be in love anymore, because you'll know that what you felt was something else, something different. Because for there to be love, it must be shared and reciprocated.
So when you love, love with all your heart, but make sure you are loved in return.
We are alone, more or less, when we are born. We are alone when we die. We are alone when we start school. We are alone when we step out into the working world.
Then there are things we choose to do alone. Some run alone. Others read alone. Many write alone. Some live alone, by choice. I like to bike alone, to work out alone, to think on my own, alone.
Some things, however, cannot be done alone. The greatest of these is love. You cannot love alone. You might think you can, that you can love someone who does not love you back, that you can have this relationship where one person loves and the other does not, but time will prove that this simply does not and cannot work.
It takes two to tango and two to love. Yes, you each may have, from time to time, varying depth and strength of love, the love may be more unconditional for one than for the other, or may be more accepting and forgiving with one than with another, but you both must love for the relationship to have any hope, any future. If just one of you loves, then this is going nowhere.
This means risking love by admitting your love to someone, by putting yourself out there, taking a chance on love, with the real possibility that you will be doing this alone and, therefore, be ultimately rejected.
In which case you will, once again, be alone. But you won't truly be in love anymore, because you'll know that what you felt was something else, something different. Because for there to be love, it must be shared and reciprocated.
So when you love, love with all your heart, but make sure you are loved in return.
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