I loaded the paper recycling in the trunk of the car the night before and was planning to stop at the transfer station on the way home from Bikram. Three stoplights after the transfer station, Kathrin asked me if I was still planning to stop there. If I don't leave some reminder for myself, like some of the trash on the front seat of the car, I forget what I was planning to do. I turned around at Costco and headed back. Kathrin asked if she could have some time to look in the thrift shop that is located there. I said sure I would be able to dump the trash on my own. She was out of the shop reasonably quickly because they didn't have any books she was interested in.
When I got home, I experienced some nerve pain in my left wrist. I was pretty sure it was coming from my shoulder or my neck. While I was planning to do more trimming of the blue-flowered bushes against my neighbor's fence, I thought I'd better put that off for now and give my body a chance to rest.
Kathrin prepared a brunch of fried eggs and lox and cream cheese on crackers. I was planning to do some less strenuous gardening since I couldn't do the blue-flowered bushes. Instead, I went down for a nap after washing the brunch dishes. I must have laid down around 11; I woke up sometime after two. The phone rang several times. I was so tired I didn't care. It wound up Judy had called twice in a row and left a text. She hadn't heard from me and was getting worried. I explained my exhaustion. I told her if I went on for six months like this, I would be seeking medical care.
I finally got up and did something with my day. While I didn't trim the blue-flowered bushes, a massive job involving cutting down some haole koa trees in the process, I was up for trimming my bougainvillea running amok in the upper back yard outside of my bedroom door. I moved the radio from the kitchen to the bedroom to listen to Fresh Air while I did the garden work. After I finished trimming the shrub, I raked the waste on the front driveway that I had cut when I trimmed back the vines from that shared fence the other day. Then I raked up the green waste in the upper back yard from the work I had done a few weeks ago.
While I took a break and worked on the blog, Kathrin was getting ready for a date. She was playing some music by Sade. I thought her voice is so powerful because there is always longing in her voice. I remember being younger and having those feelings. Maybe they will come back after a while, but I didn't have them while Mike was alive. The longing was to love someone deeply and freely. I had that with Mike without having to lose my center.
I think I've written about this before, but what the hey. One day early in our relationship, I went up to him and told him how much I loved him. He said he wasn't feeling it right then. His comment wasn't a putdown or a way to push me away; it was just a fact. I told him that was okay. I still was enjoying feeling love for him. He had a wonderful reaction. He said, "I'm so jealous." He was jealous of my feeling of love. He wanted that feeling for himself too. I had a relationship with him, where I could freely express my appreciation and feel completely safe. It was worth everything. I don't know if there are many people like Mike out in the world. But he was the only one I found like that. How much of that limited exposure I had to people like this was due to who I was or because there are only a few people like him in the world, I don't know.
Whatever, I sit here now realizing that I don't feel some huge ache for something unfulfilled in the realm of human connection. Mike and I were genuinely able to build something together that satisfied me. I can only hope that it satisfied him as well. I am aware that if it didn't, my blame is limited. It had something to do with his inability to freely accept love. I will never know. I doubt I would have ever known even if he had lived to tell me because everyone's experience is so much their own.
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Musings: I'm putting this separately so those who are not interested can choose not to read it.
My point of view of human nature isn't quite as dire as many that of many Christian religions, if not all religions. Most religions talk about the evil in man, and good comes only from God. There is a push back from some groups, arguing that man is capable of being fundamentally good. My point of view is that man is pulled in both directions. Complex.
Our need to belong, our need to connect, is compelling. Of course, that very impulse can be used for evil. Do I think evil, therefore, outweighs good in us? I don't know. I do believe that when we harm others, we also harm ourselves.
I worked with a Guatemalan man tortured for a month and then thrown out in the street to finish dying. He was able to see the auras of the men who were torturing him. He said those auras got darker with each act of cruelty they performed. I'm of the school of thought that we can't set out to hurt others without hurting ourselves. This does not stop us from harming others. That's inescapable. Sometimes we hurt others entirely by accident. Sometimes we hurt others by rejecting them for what they do to us. I have rejected people in my life simply because I couldn't cope with their negativity. I'm sure I hurt them in the process. I can only hope that my openness about why I rejected them helped them modify their behavior. I know that there have been people who have rejected me and shared their profoundly negative opinions of me. If they didn't do this to hurt me, I became a stronger and better person for their input. Intention has a significant role in our impact on the world. But that is tricky. We have to be honest with ourselves about our intentions. Ah, there's the rub.
I think we have a drive to be connected and see ourselves and be seen by others as good. I remember reading somewhere that even serial killers on death row believe they are good people who did something wrong. Wanting to be seen as good can be the very thing that drives us to do evil things. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Very tricky. So the drive to be seen as good can lead us to do the opposite. I'm beginning to persuade myself that the direst statements of religions about the basically evil nature of man may be right.
I have to wonder why we are so vulnerable to our worst impulses. How has this furthered our chances of survival? I guess when we are living hand to mouth, and we have to make sure the food makes it into our mouth and the mouths of those who support our well-being, these traits make sense. As absolute power corrupts absolutely, perhaps the absolute abundance corrupts these other impulses. On a simple level, I know I feel much better off eating fruit, but I reach for cake, cookies, and candies. Now, this is a dysfunctional system if there ever was one. It does look like our intelligence, which created this abundance, is the author of the circumstances for our imbalance. I'm back to vigilance as a solution to the problem.
Vigilance is what religion teaches. Always be on the lookout for the presence of sinful intentions in what you do. Sinfulness is overreaching, or perhaps it's under reaching too. If we attack ourselves, aren't we also attacking a human being? Can we hurt ourselves and not hurt others? Does it make any difference who is the subject of the torture or the abuse?
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