IT ENDED

I am interested in a shocking statement made about Rumi on a recent blog.  Statement:  Rumi tossed his lover into a well, and wrote love poems about his dead lover.  Shock!

Really?

Relationships between lovers end.  Ugh…stark statement isn’t it?

Does the ending with your lover mean that the Relationship was not valuable, was not beneficial?  Is it the ending that typically hurts?  No probably not, the hurt starts somewhere else… perhaps the middle.   Relationships between lovers end.

Does the End, mean that the love was less … real?  I know I certainly have said… YUP.  The fact that the relationship ended, the love was less real… JERK.  But is that really true?

I take a step back.  Is the purpose of my life to capture and cage the…other?  Or is my purpose in life to become the “captured”?  Really… think about it.  How may relationships are designed to allow the other to … Thrive?  And if the goal was truly to allow “Thriving” would there be the pain in the middle, or at the end of the relationship?

Why are romantic relationships different from those say  with your children?  And I will argue that the relationship between parent and child is remarkably intimate heart to heart closeness.

What is the difference in the relationship between Lovers, and the relationships between parent and child.  I know my heart has been broken by my children, and I will continue to put as the primary focus their “Thriving”.  I love them… period.

But with my Lover……?  The fight became whose cage would we live in today.  I wanted to clutch the magnificent moments, and hold my breath through the tough ones…..

I don’t do the same with my children.  I delight in their machinations… even when I fight hard to keep them safe.

So what is the difference?  Why did I apply a difference?

Honestly….I mean to kill my lover.  I want to remake my lover into my own image…”if I work a bit on him here, redefine there…. shuffle a few odd behaviors out…”  then in my mind my romantic relationship would be perfect.  We were out to change, even to the death, each other.  I am not that much different from that shocking statement said of Rumi.

By the way, I would never kill my children…I expend all of my energy to cause them to Thrive.  I set boundaries to allow me to Thrive in our parent/child relationship

I wonder what would have happened if I had done the same with my lover?

THE POET’S HEART

I fell in love with the Poet.  I keep my distance.  I study his writings.  And with each poem I fall deeper and deeper in love.

I have no idea what he looks like, what he does for food/shelter/clothing, and whether he is just a mean curmudgeon in daily life.  I have no idea whether he has left a string of broken hearts, or if he is a man deeply committed in his core to one woman.

But I am amazed at his writing.  It is unfathomable that words so graphic and heart rending in one poem, can be captivating and enlightening in the next…all structured in a fashion that exposes the cleverness and fragility of his heart.  With each of his poems, I fall further in love with him.

So in my minds eye, he is a thoughtful, quiet, clever soul.

Is that Odd for me?  Not really.  I am a wordsmith by trade.  I intently listen to the choice of words, the structure of phrases, the rhythm of communication.  Words reflect the raw sacred material of  life.  He is an expert in his craft.  His phrases strike chords deep within me.  I am in love with the unknowable Poet.

Yes, but isn’t that … Odd?  OK yes it is odd… I have fallen in love with the unknowable Poet. It is his distance and unavailability that enhances this love.  For it seems, I am much better at loving from a distance as the unknown lover.

But..are you looking directly at the…Oddity?  Ahhh…..I understand….I am not that distanced.  The poet is pointing, and I am falling in love…. with  Source within …. me.

DANCE REUNION SWOOP

My Mentor pointed me in the direction of Authenticity.  The pointing resulted in learning to approach lfe’s moments as a blank legal pad. To choose full authenticity, use that legal pad as a doorway… swoop through…encounter.  My shorthand: Authenticity is Dancing the Swoop.  (This is a remarkable lesson for me.  I am very grateful to my Mentor.  The legal pad lesson analogy is fully his idea.  He just didn’t realize how close to home he struck)

I planned to attend my 25th graduate school reunion. I was … well hesitant is an understatement.

I remembered walking the halls of the school, carrying my stack of dog eared legal pads…I kept copious notes.  (Still do to this day.)  And I loved coffee: dark, lovingly brewed with just the right amount of heated creme, plenty of sugar… why it was a liquid dessert of sustenance.  So there I was in graduate school:  legal pads, coffee… and..

well I am a clutz.  Fine…I said it.  I cannot walk into a room of people without being so darn self-conscious I act like a “drunken sailor”  (Description not made up by me, but given to me by a nun in grade school as she advised my mother to put me in dance class.  I refused to go.  Perhaps I should have made a different choice) O.K….the point is, I always carried a stack of dog eared, coffee stained (as a result of tripping), copious fully noted legal pads throughout my days in graduate school.

And those legal pads carried my identity.  This is who I am as I study and endeavor to become just as clever as I perceived everyone else.  Could they see that I thought I was a … fraud?  Soon to be discovered and kicked out once the mistake of my admission was recognized?  I could not share those notes….for sharing meant that I was…discoverable.  I was amazed at how being quiet and sitting in the back of the room could lead to….longevity.  Suffice it to say…I opened and experienced just a very narrow, limited amount of encounter with others in graduate school.

Would my friends be there?  Well…flurry of emails exchanged… the whole class now conversing…. perhaps opportunity for encounter….

Several years have passed, I have no idea where I placed those legal pad.  I am..simply me.  I gained enough skill level to provide food/shelter/clothing.  I could approach this reunion … with a blank legal pad.  That is it!  I will walk in and just see what everyone else has accomplished.  Might be great location to pick up ideas about stories.  I am a great observer.  Blank legal pad and me, observing.  I can do this.

So I walked into the room with no agenda.  First shock:  I recognized very few faces…  It is amazing how hard it is to recognize people after just 25 years.  So now, I needed to walk up, put my hand out…and say… are you a classmate or a spouse?  It got to be fun.  I was not the only person in this predicament…in fact everyone was.  We had to go back to describe what we looked liked 25 years earlier… (trust me, there was a lot of wistfulness there).  And these encounters turned into fun….

Person by person, I was able to describe laughingly all of the bumps in the road after graduate school…..  So many of us had similar experiences, so many had remarkably laughing experiences..the ones where you say:  “man, better you than me.”

At one point with a jolt, I recognized that I had left behind the blank legal pad, I was no longer the observer, but I had stepped through the legal pad doorway… and was doing the Swoop…

I finally got those dance lessons.

Mentor…thank you.