A Resilient Love: Finding a Joyful Life

In therapy, one consultant admonished a patient who revealed to the group that they wanted to die because there were no romantic prospects in their future and a life without love was one that they’d rather cash out.

She was shocked to hear such a sentiment, and if memory serves, she exclaimed, “Ridiculous!”

Yet, when you’ve always had it, how would you know? I’ve heard that mothers love their babies from birth, and I can attest that for every rule, there is an exception.

My mother told me that I was born with a worried look on my face. I’ve seen the photos, and there is undoubtedly one scrunched-up face that might resemble worry lines on a ninety-year-old.

Before I was two, there was a photo of me asleep in my grandmother’s lap, and she’d captured the date and captioned it “Little Angel.” As she showed it to me, she explained, “because she was calling you everything but,” she giggled. I attributed her humour to having won in that situation.

When I first learned this story, I was sad, for it brought up yet another example of getting thrown out of the fibre of the family unit. Of being and feeling alienated and alone despite having membership in a large family of origin. Maybe because of it.

More recently, there’s no pain in the story. It’s an example of an overwhelmed woman and the resources and demands she faced. Also, I’ve scrutinized her word choice, and to call a baby “worried” implies a particular perspective worth investigating.

To be worried suggests that she already thought that I was doubting her suitability for the job that lay ahead.

Personal Experiences

As her secondborn, she’d already learned that to be a mother is to fail, for you will always expect more of yourself than you are capable of delivering. Yet, the first time around, your ego trusts that you are better than your mother was, and that you will get it right.

But you can’t. You fail. And your second child looks at you like she already knows that. If the war began with a glance, and the battles were all based on protecting the ego, who can put emotion aside to find empathy for the other side, when it’s all-encompassing?

When your heart is fully engaged in your own emotional experience, there is no room for the empathy required to find a resolution. First, you must deal with your own.
Personally, many of my emotions were too overwhelming, and when I say that, I mean that the energy that pumps into my muscles takes over – it overwhelms my ability to sit, as I’m sure it does to you.

To feel and notice without moving is a skill I’ve had to learn, practice and hone. It’s one of the activities that, when asked, “What did you do today?” disappoints an audience expecting entertainment. When you live your life to entertain others, you may be shocked by how quickly they can change the channel.

Perhaps a baby’s facial expression is an uncontrolled, meaningless thing. Maybe the sounds were overwhelming, the lights too bright, the air too frigid and drafty. However, first impressions are difficult to shake, and once established, all you do is find evidence to support them.

Individual Expectations

I wanted love so badly, but I didn’t know what it was. Like that song by Mashmakhan, we confuse it for so many things.

Confusing it for attention, I used a razor blade to gash my thumb twice to get my father’s attention, but he sent me to the bathroom myself to bandage it up, proud of himself for having a kid who’d mastered that skill.

So, cutting didn’t work, and I should have learned that violence and love have no place together, but that would come eventually.

Love starts with self-love. Yet I thought this was one of those things they say that sound nice but aren’t accurate or helpful. They say if you can’t love yourself, then you can’t love anyone else. I thought that was dumb because I’m unlovable, but other people are golden, making it hard not to love them.

However, I had to learn that jealousy, admiration, and I think that every good emotion that’s pulled out of you by a seeming external force is information to note, but it’s not love either. It feels more like marketing and charm, and both lead to remorse and regret.

What do you do when you love something? You pay attention to it, like when I wanted my dad to notice my pain and sit with me, yet I failed in my communication of my needs. You put aside your assumptions, feelings and preferences and find out what theirs are. You join them in their world.

Automatic Assumptions

So, is it ridiculous to go through life knowing you will be alone throughout it? No, but it’s the second part that is the absurd assumption. It’s not that there’s someone for everyone, but that your world in which you are alone is a bubble, and you must join up with the rest of them as bubbles do, and your isolation evaporates.

You have to start by getting curious about yourself. What are your innermost desires, conflicts, and secrets?

I did not want to do this. Like you, I had no time. There were tangible results to produce, to exchange for the time spent. Not daydreaming and staring into space like a fool. First, it was against my wishes; then it became a result of introspective pursuits, such as snowmobiling and hunting; and finally, it became a necessary way of life.

Having no time was the excuse. The genuine reason was that I’d assumed that the path to success and happiness was one of external validation. I based my choices on what other people wanted from me or thought of me. It was a horrible way to live, and not only because I seemed to get it wrong continually.

I’d assumed relationships were reciprocal, until they weren’t. Moreover, I’d assumed relationships were good and healthy. Then there I was, paying good money to go from living with thinking of my dad on a pedestal to reviewing my life through the eyes of my therapist and what would have been healthy and supportive for me.

It was painful and expensive to be able to state as fact, “I did not have the most supportive father.” That is, without regret, animosity or the attachment of any emotion. It was what it was.

To know yourself this well is then to be able to know someone else that well. Only then will you see where all the assumptions and blind spots hide truths that ultimately lead to the end of relationships. Instead, you can see the things in common that are the foundation of a long and shared existence.

This shared existence is the basis of joy, and it doesn’t have to be romantic. It’s political, based on your beliefs about what a government should do and how a citizen should function. It’s social, based on your beliefs about how many, what type and why to hang out with others.

I’ve decided it’s a seven-layered thing, as it’s What Could Be. It was a joy to work on this model, a secret pursuit while in recovery from one corporate job before jumping into another. It’s a model that has helped me find my bubble, my joy, and my love for life. It’s helped me clarify and filter opportunities, relationships, and ideas.

Clarifying Conflict

Maybe you, too, know a journey where love does such a thing as end. Where there was so-called “love”, now there is a divorce. Now you know how people can differ on a whole new level, and let that knowledge guide you with a filter for those hundreds of people you meet.

Every conflict reveals a new filter. A value difference. An unshared perspective. May it lighten your load as you refine your boundaries, and that shell you carry to protect yourself will become as clear as a bubble – easy to mesh and join with the alike, yet completely undisturbed by those still sporting hard surfaces.

While I retired at 47, I was still a hard surface. I awoke with memories of conflicts and, like Jamie Lynn Spears, Things I Should Have Said. Working through those conflicts, I finally achieved the peace of mind that came with no conflict left unaddressed. Where I couldn’t hold back, I unleashed. Some pearls of wisdom emerged, but you can judge for yourself if I’ve shared anything of value.

Today, I don’t repress, suppress or in any other way pack up a conflict and take it into the future with me. I’m now a real-timer, able to deal with situations in the present with the appropriate level of pushback.

Perhaps you could say, ‘I learned how to deal with conflict productively.’ That only took me half a century!

Delegating Strengths

Over the weekend, my partner stood back, criticizing his handiwork. “Will anyone notice that I’m out one inch?”

“Only you will,” I told him. “If anyone says anything or makes you feel bad, we’ll tell them to get off the property and never come back.”

It was what he’d told me when I mentioned that I’d installed the facet upside down, because it made more sense to me; yet I’d wondered what others would say. I’d laughed with relief at his reply, but the truth is, we don’t have anyone over ever.

However, since that exchange, the truth has come out that I’m the Heavy in this relationship. “It’ll be your job,” he said with a shy grin.

“No problem,” I saluted. He’s still working on being angry immediately, and not a few weeks later. However, measuring in weeks is still progress.

If you need a Heavy, let me know, but be warned, physical appearances might surprise you.

Hiring Help

If I’d known love was always right there, I would have reached for it sooner. Like a hungry person sitting on a dandelion, someone can always shout out, “Hey, eat the weed.” It’s a start.

I’d been told to love myself, but what does that mean? I know it doesn’t mean going broke buying luxury items. My first quote in print was, “Luxury is peace of mind brought on by lack of worry.”

You can choose not to worry; you can decide to make a plan to take care of everything so that there’s nothing to worry about. Blocking it is unhelpful. My finances used to frighten me, to the point where I wouldn’t even open my mail. It’s not a worry-free way to live.

Today, I have a person I pay to handle things for me, and I only have to open my mail once every three months proverbially. When I do, it’s all sorted, calculated and ready for decisions to be made. Phew. Worry is a choice, and peace of mind is luxurious. The price I pay is entirely worth it, and highly affordable.

I found therapy to be expensive and slow, with random difficult progress, and as someone with communication issues, what was I to expect from talk therapy? I read memoirs, psychology texts, academic journals, and science magazines to identify causes and solutions for my problems.

Sometimes, the best person you can hire is yourself, and the key is knowing the difference between yourself and others. When do you offload accountability and hard work, and when do you offset weaknesses and source support?

When you love, you act, you focus, you narrow your attention and slow down. You become receptive and open, ready to listen to every word as well as the intention and emotion behind it. You catch it all without polluting the message with what you expect to, want to, or need to hear.

That includes when asking yourself, “What’s going on with you right now? How are you feeling, reeling, responding, considering or questioning with your inner monologue, your nightly dreams, and your daily conversations? Why? Let’s go there.” No time for it? How do you have no time for yourself? Do you need some productivity tips, or is it time to answer that question first?

Love yourself by taking the time to pay attention to the whole of you. Don’t be surprised to find that you want something, but not all of it, and you don’t want it, because there are drawbacks…it gets murky in there, but joy and love are hiding in those dusty cobwebs.

In for a little spring cleaning before summer’s here in ten days?

I started by writing it all down because the lists of pros and cons, dreams, and desires had become too long to track mentally, first as bullet points, then as sentences, and finally, as a clear vision.

Strip away what other people want from you, or what you want from other people. Forget the sunk costs and the corrections for the past. Key words: You, The Future, and Genuine Desire.