The mental, emotional, and physical discoveries and challenges faced as I work through the consequences of chucking my tenured teaching job in Lancaster, California to pursue Paradise.
Have I mentioned how blessed I feel that my family will be on Maui for Christmas? It’s unreasonable—the practical thing would have been for my brother and I to fly to the mainland for the holidays, rather than Mom, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my niece flying to Hawaiʻi; two plane tickets are far cheaper than four—but also wonderful. I’m beyond glad that I’ll be spending the holidays this year at home and with family. I get to have my cake and eat it, too!
It’s a funny thing; last Christmas I (reluctantly) flew to the mainland for the holidays. While I was glad to be with family and friends, I was terribly homesick for a place I’d only lived for five months. In future I will be happy to travel if need be to share the holidays with family, but this year I am thrilled to spend Christmas at home.
It’s a first, and firsts are important. Whether it’s the first round of holidays as a couple or the first round of holidays after the loss of a loved one, firsts are momentous; they mark a new reality and begin to establish a “new normal.” I think that’s why this feels like such a big deal to me. Christmas at home makes it home.
“What if” is a sucker’s game; I can pose the questions—“what if” I’d stayed in Lancaster, “what if” I’d ended up on Oʻahu, “what if” I’d done Les Misérables instead of Rent, “what if,” “what if,” “what if”—but I’m not interested in imagining answers. The glorious life I’m living has nothing to do with “What if…” and everything to do with “What actually happened was…”
I am grateful that my family chose to come to Hawaiʻi for Christmas this year. I know it’s a significant hardship—this is peak travel time, or close enough that it might as well be—and I won’t take it for granted.
In any high-pressure situation—from a kindergarten classroom through a community theatre production to an international crisis—tension is sometimes high and tempers short. This is normal and we survive, although in the (unpleasant) moment, we may wonder.
Every experience contains both pleasant (even pleasurable) and unpleasant (even painful) moments. It’s normal to be frustrated, hurt or angry when things go “badly,” and to be happy and pleased when things go “well.” Where we get into trouble is when present experience passes into memory: memory is not a perfect record of experience; rather, memory is a perfect record of how we think and feel about our experience, and we have a choice—a choice we make in the moment and remake every time we recall a memory.
You see, our memories are cast and recast by our choices: our attitudes, our attention, our focus. If we focus on the “bad” and how it made us feel and we choose a self-righteous or defensive or offensive attitude, our memories take on the tone and tenor of that attitude, and every time we recall that memory to mind, we will reinforce the negative and push the positive further into the background. If instead we focus on the “good” and how it made us feel and choose an upbeat, optimistic, accepting attitude, our memories take on the bright hues of that attitude. Either way, our attention shapes our memories to fit our chosen attitudes.
Attention is to memory (and experience) as sunlight is to plants; a necessity and a nutrient. We can choose to shine the light of our focus on the weeds of negativity or the fruits and vegetables and glorious flowers of positivity, and whatever we focus on will grow and grow.
Once upon a time, I was a mess, especially with respect to romantic love relationships. If you want to argue that I’m still a mess, well, I won’t dispute the assertion, although I will argue that I’m a much more interesting and pleasant mess than I was before.
Once upon a time, I chained my happiness to my romantic circumstances; if I was in a romantic relationship, I was (ecstatically!) happy, and when (usually) I wasn’t, I was miserable. I held others responsible for my happiness (unfair!), and then made it nearly impossible for potential romantic partners to care about me—I was (am) shy, I had (but no longer!) a terrible self image, I was deathly afraid of being hurt so I erected walls around me that effectively kept others out—then I bemoaned the “fate” I’d made for myself.
This went on for decades (yes, literally decades). Over time, I came to understand intellectually what was going on and how I was sabotaging myself, but it wasn’t until quite recently that I broke through all that and made not just a new understanding but a new experience. Since then, I’ve reclaimed responsibility for my happiness, begun really loving myself, and opened myself up to all manner of possibility.
Make no mistake, I still long for a romantic relationship—I have always been a sappy romantic—but the changes that have, I believe, made a romance much more likely have also made me much more comfortable with whatever will be. I am a great and worthy guy—given the opportunity, I will be a very good partner—but if such a relationship doesn’t manifest, I’ll be fine. I love and will go on loving, whether my love is requited or not, because it is the right thing (for me) to do.
Thinking about it this morning, I saw a parallel between the way I now see love and the way I have long considered the afterlife. A simplistic theology suggests we should behave well and do “right” in this life in order to win a reward (or avoid punishment) in the next. I reject that idea; I choose to do “right” because it is the right thing to do, without thought of reward, and I believe that is the very best reason for doing the right thing.
Likewise in love, I do not love in hopes that my love will be requited (okay, part of me hopes for that outcome, but not the greater part). Rather, I love because I am loving, and because loving is the right thing to do. I think it likely that the more loving I am (romantically or otherwise), the more likely I am to be requited, but it won’t necessarily work out that way, and that’s okay.
I am currently “in love” with someone (in fact, since I’ve no actual romantic relationship with anyone at the moment, I’m “in love” with more than one “someone”). I harbor some hope but no expectation that I will be requited, and while it would be wonderful if it were, it isn’t necessary to my joy and satisfaction. I enjoy the giddy flutter in my stomach, I enjoy the passionate yearning, I enjoy the state of being “in love” and it hurts no one, not even me.
I am sometimes a little sad at the thought that I may love unrequited for the rest of my life, but that sadness passes quickly; I know that my life is ephemeral—I’m not guaranteed so much as the next moment—so I will love while I can.
(An open letter to all I love and all I ever shall.)
You may not know I love you, and that’s okay; the important thing is that I act out of love, not that I be recognized for it. You may know I love you and not like it, and that’s okay; I don’t love you with the expectation that you love me in return, and since my love makes no demands, it does no harm. You may know and be glad that I love you, and that’s great; it’s a pleasure to be the cause of gladness in another. You may know I love you and may also love me, and that’s awesome; love requited is a blessing. No matter what, I love you.
I don’t love you because of what you do, have done, or might do for me. I don’t love you so you’ll love me back. I don’t love you and expect anything in return; my love is not a commodity to be bargained with, but rather it’s a gift, freely given with no strings attached.
I love you because I am a lover. I love you because my heart could not help itself (and I don’t know and don’t really care why). I love you recklessly, I love you passionately, I love you steadfastly… I just love you.
Because I love you, I hope for what’s best for you, in your judgment, and it’s not my place to tell you what’s best for you. Sometimes that means separation or even estrangement; it never means I love you less. I am on your side, even if I’m not at your side.
I don’t put my hopes for our relationship (whatever it may be) ahead of your well-being or your desires. If your desires (or mine) cause our paths to diverge, I’ll be sad, but I won’t be mad. I would never want my love to bind you to earth when you are meant to fly. Rather, I want my love to be steady, rising air that lifts you up even if it also carries you away.
It may also be that I choose to separate myself from you. Perhaps our lives or lifestyles aren’t compatible, or maybe our values clash. Maybe too close an association feels stifling or painful or harmful. If I choose to separate myself from you, it doesn’t change my love for you; it simply means that I love myself, too.
I freely offer to serve you—to serve your interests, to do good on your behalf—with the following qualifications:
I will not support actions that risk significant harm to you, others, or myself
I will not act in ways contrary to my own values or nature
I will not serve spite
I will not act unlovingly
I am imperfect, so my expression of love is likewise imperfect. I promise to strive always for excellence and improvement in love, and commit to learn the lessons the Universe offers when my practice of love falls short.
This is how I hope to love in all loving relationships: collegial, filial, familial, romantic. This is my manifesto.
It’s rather an odd thing I’m doing—writing a letter to someone who hasn’t been conceived and in fact may never be conceived—but you are and have always been very real to me, and loving you has made me far better than I would otherwise be. And I do love you, beyond all reason.
Back in the bad old days I dreamed of being your daddy and that dream helped me endure when it seemed ending was my best choice. Back in the bad old days, what kept me striving to be better than I thought I could be was the desire to be the daddy you deserve.
Loving you without condition—what condition could I possibly impose?—made me love the other children I encountered; indeed, you are the reason I love being a teacher. Loving you is the reason I cry when I hear the song “These Are My Children” or “Zoe Jane.” Loving you paved the way for me to someday finally love even myself.
And in these good new days I love you still; love you more, if that’s even possible, because in these good new days I finally believe myself worthy to be your daddy. I always believed (or wanted to believe) that I’d be a good daddy, but that belief was, in the bad old days, more a forlorn hope. In these good new days, I am confident.
I do not know if we will meet in this or any life—I do not know anything, really, about what is to come—but I know this: I love you. I will always love you.
For most of my life, I’ve been emotionally fragile. A passionate and deeply caring nature makes me vulnerable, while a profound lack of confidence and a terrible self image have in the past made me “delicate.” I am smart enough to have realized quite early that my insecurity and poor self esteem weren’t grounded in “reality” (whatever that is), but my emotional state was not amenable to “reason.”
Because I had low confidence, a negative, unrealistic self image, major insecurity, and poor self esteem, I was deeply wounded whenever things didn’t go the way I thought they should, especially in romantic relationships (the aspect of my character still most powerfully affected by insecurity). When a relationship didn’t manifest the way I thought it should, or when a relationship ended, I took it personally, as confirmation of the serious flaws I saw in myself. I perhaps-understandably assumed that it was my vulnerability that made me so fragile, and I bent my efforts toward reducing that vulnerability.
Time and again I swore that I was “done with relationships, done with women, done with vulnerability, done,” only to find months later that the barriers I’d erected so painstakingly accomplished nothing except to give me a false sense of security; come what may, I would fall in love again, and the cycle would repeat. And the story I told myself was that my vulnerability was the problem; that if only I could erect sturdier, more impenetrable barriers, I would finally be “safe.” I invested enormous effort in raising walls around my sensitive heart, and the world could see those walls—there’s a reason some have judged me aloof or arrogant—but my walls never protected me; love would fly over or tunnel under or seep through. I could no more help being vulnerable than I could help being left-handed.
In retrospect, I realize that it was never vulnerability that made me fragile; on the contrary, that vulnerability may be my greatest strength. No, it was the insecurity, the lack of confidence in my worth as a person (and as a romantic partner) that made me fragile. As I’ve begun to be more secure in myself, more confident of my (infinite!) worth and worthiness, I’ve handled the nicks and scrapes—inevitable when one is open and vulnerable—with much greater equanimity. No longer do insecurities and lack of confidence magnify them out of all proportion; rather, I see them as what they are—inevitable consequences of living with my heart exposed.
For me, then, resilience is the product not of traditional Western models of masculine strength—every time I tried to emulate those models, I found myself more fragile, rather than less—rather, resilience has come (very recently) as I finally love myself, accept myself, value and treasure myself, believe in my objective and relative worth.
I am good. I am worthy. I am awesome! Furthermore, I am respected, I am appreciated, I am loved. Knowing these to be true, not just in my head but in my very marrow, gives me confidence and security which in turn give me resilience. No longer am I devastated when someone doesn’t see things my way, doesn’t understand my choices or practice, doesn’t feel about me the way I wish she would. I may be (am!) disappointed when things don’ go my way, but disappointment is a long way from devastation. And I am confident that because I am happy in myself, the relationships I long for will manifest.
It seems to me, then, that the “recipe” for emotional resilience begins with self love, from which rise security and confidence—faith, if you will—which allow me to see disappointments as ephemeral rather than eternal and to believe that the opinions and choices of others, even when those opinions and decisions are in regard to me, are not ultimately about me! but rather about those others.
