Peace of mind

I met the mayor of a city once. He was a gallant, ambitious man. He was convicted in his views on urban welfare, interesting for his dramatic stories of political heroism, and just admirable overall. He fought things, like drugs and poverty and corruption. When you hear him speak there's no end of feeling, the kind that moves you to believing that cities are places where people are degraded and are revived, and that this is a man who cares for their fundamental human redemption. We all sat there and we were wowed.

He wasn't mayor when I heard him, actually, but our school practically had a love affair with him. My history teacher invited him to class after his first talk in the auditorium, just to have him tell us stories. So our tables in a circle around this leader among men, but boys really, we were rapt in attention. That's how I remember it. I sat on the lip of this curl, next to my teacher who giggled at every quip he made. The boys in the middle in front of him were tilting their chairs, but their mouths were agape. I sat there because my friend sat there with me, or I with him. We didn't tilt our chairs. We also kept our coats on and tied our ties tight, because there was little room to get comfortable when the trains were cold in the morning and they will be again when it's dark. But our teacher told us to take our coats off for the mayor.

He must have talked about serious things. I didn't pay much attention in history class then, because learning this stuff felt stifling. When he was done, a lot of kids had real questions about things that he might do to fix things in the future, but when they were done and we were unraveling, my friend asked what use were these political goods if the overpopulated human race could do with some depopulating. Oh, don't do that, I thought, I just want to leave. Our classmates pretended not to hear him and gathered their books.

This mayor courted him earnestly and privately, as if he had stepped up to share his thoughts. He entreated my friend not to be cynical, and to believe that every human being has a right to peace and happiness.

We remained friends for a while. I never saw him outside of school, and I heard publicly that he didn't make it back for the next semester. By then I had found belonging in my studies and my love for poetry. I made other friends, I dated, and I still talked to our counselor sometimes, as we misfits both once did.

In two years, he passed away. He had become depressed and took too many pills. Some of us went to his funeral, although his family didn't really know who we were. His mother cried so hard. We were asked eventually to leave, and on my way out I saw his face. In his note, he wrote that he was at peace. I know that and I know we all deserve that, but I wonder who thinks about it when we fix problems and fight fights and say things.

We find out there are more things than we can handle. Rest in peace, my friend. I know you live.

Jealousy

This is a bit overdue, but I was going to write something about jealousy and how I've been trying to grapple with these impulses. My process came at a good time, when I've been met with problems of distance and personal space, coinciding with moving back to school and a chance to free myself from some rigidities of summer.

I moved back in to facilitate consent discussions. We were given a reader to look at, and in between articles on dating violence and behavioral patterns of sexual harassment, I found this article about jealousy and how it's rooted in the things we grow up believing about relationships. I found it a bit out of place at first in the context of sexual assault (this advice is directed to people in polyamorous relationships), but of course these things are related.

I can't write it any better than the following...

Our society is addicted to three core beliefs about relationships that are almost guaranteed to create jealousy even in the most well-adjusted people. Most of us have absorbed these beliefs without even realizing it. Identifying and dismantling these beliefs in our "heart of hearts" is the single most effective way to short-circuit jealousy. Ask yourself how much of you believes each of these three statements. Is it 90% of yourself that believes them? 50%? Notice which belief is most entrenched in your subconscious mind and which one youíve made the most progress on:

Core Belief #1

If my partner really loved me, (s)he wouldn't have any desire for a sexual relationship with anyone else.

This belief sees any interest your partner has in anyone else as a direct reflection of how much (s)he loves you. It is a quantitative view of love which equates the amount of love with the ability to be interested in having another partner. When you break it down, this is as absurd as saying that a couple that gives birth to a second child must not love their first child or they couldn't possibly have any interest in having a second one.

Core Belief #2

If my partner were happy with me, and if I were a good partner/spouse/lover/etc., my partner would be so satisfied that (s)he wouldn't want to get involved with anyone else.

This belief is even more insidious. With the first belief you can at least blame it on your partner for not loving you enough. This belief says that if your partner is interested in someone else, it is your fault for not being the perfect lover or spouse and your relationship must be a failure. If you truly believe that your lover could only be interested in another partner because youíre inadequate, you can see how that will generate jealousy big time!

Core Belief #3

Itís just not possible to love more than one person at the same time.

This belief is built on the "scarcity economy of love", the belief that love is a finite resource, there is only so much to go around, and there is never enough. Therefore, if my partner gives any of her or his love to anyone else, that necessarily means that there is less for me. Because most people already feel there are some areas in their relationship where they are not getting enough of something (time, love, affection, sex, support, commitment) they are fearful that they will receive even less if their partner gets involved with additional partners.

Some of this I feel like I've known. Some of this, on the other hand, I really needed to hear, especially then. And this would be great to read and read again, even if I never choose to have more than one partner. What else could make as much sense? What else could keep us away from fear and sorrow?

But the worst thing to take away from this would be the idea that you were wrong all along, and you have to get back on track in order to do things right once and for all. It will always take serious mental work to truly believe that those you love deserve everyone else's as well. And maybe that love cannot involve you.

This is so incredibly difficult. To do this, I really think we're attempting to subvert our minds and our bodies together. Jealousy is biological. [Edit: Jealousy is learned, too.] To do this, we need to be better than human.

But all I've ever wanted to do is love a person in an eternal, transcendent, immaterial kind of way.

Trust

I've started these last two school years with training for discussions on consent culture. I find the actual discussions awkward and a little forced, because the first-years are never fully engaged and the material is so important, and also because as a society we're still not prepared to talk about intimacy and respect. Of course, you try to change this, but you have just one hour.

But the trainings for the workshops, to me, are among the most inspiring and visionary experiences I've had the fortune of being part of. I've just finished my second day of this year. I've reached a lot of conclusions before today or yesterday, I think. That socialization imprisons one's body, mind and soul. That we deter our own happiness when we don't treat others with humble, giving love. That battles aren't won by villianizing the people who aren't fighting with you.

The training this year is twice as large, at almost 160 people. There are only five people (two undergraduates) conducting all of it, and it is a testament to their skill, brilliance and power that they succeed as they do. Still, a little control is lost when a guy who just wanted free housing for a week with his girlfriend contends that women find reasons to accuse their lovers of assault even after consent has been achieved. Triggered members of the movement shout him down, and his damaged ego defends a falsehood he is still unsure of.

I spoke up. We like to believe that truly loving relationships are built on top of the most basic rocks of human ideals: trust, respect, the like. Trust your partner at least of fair dealings, and the rest need not be discussed. Trust...

Quickly my plea for honest dealings was dismantled by some more wary people. Love's logic doesn't, has never conformed to neat foundations. Assault, as it happens most with acquaintances, overwhelmingly depends on a trust that may not even be false. And you cannot blame these feelings over those who exploit these feelings. I should've known that before I even spoke.

Trust is loving. But trust is also violence.

I sat nervous and pensive. I felt terrible, it sucked, and I was not okay. Not because I was corrected (I really love learning), but because I realized we as humans can be abused even when we surrender to love and lovers with an open heart. There is no safety in trust, most nurturing of emotions. God, it can't be.

I struggle a lot with love. There's too much out there, everywhere and I just don't know what to do with all of it. I'm going to post later about an article I read in the consent reader about jealousy. Guess what my post will be called.

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile, the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the praires and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Edit: Wild geese... they fly south.

Visiting my grandmother

After eating with my parents today, my dad coaxed me to go visit nai nai with him once before school. My mom offered to take home the leftovers from lunch, but I gave her a confused look, so we all went. I never knew what the deal is with the two sides of my family.

We ran into her on her afternoon walk, outside the Selfhelp building she lives in. She smiled such a big smile, the kind that consumes your face from the eyes outward. I don't get moved the look; I think about how I'm going to inherit her protruding eyelids. She said it's so nice to see us. And that I never seem happy seeing her. I feign a smile and say hi.

She's so happy. She lives alone, but is not lonely. I don't think she's seen her spouse in years, maybe at least decade even. I don't think they talk to one another. For most of my life, she's been around my neighborhood, visiting us and our cousins, being warm and saying nice things. She brought me and my sister to church every Sunday for a several years when we were young. She bought me my first Bible when I had to memorize the names of all the books for Sunday school. I think she's not lonely because God is with her all the time. She brings Him to her when she chants the (Chinese) name of Christ almost every minute.

She used to babysit me. We would go around Flushing, and she'd put quarters in the rocking Mickey Mouse and Daffy Duck because my parents thought those games were too pedestrian. When I grew up, she'd remind me of those adventures literally every time she saw me. Recently, she does it less because I made a note of it to her, but she still brings it up self-referentially. I don't think it comes from senility, we just don't have that much to talk about. She told my dad to visit ye ye when he's in China, but ye ye passed away a few months ago. Never really knew him.

She asked me if American schools teach me how to treat one's family, beyond worldly matters like history and politics. She warned me about high maintenance girlfriends. She reminded me about my dad's temper, and how he's gotten better. She said my mom was very frugal. When she chanted Jesus Christ, my dad brought her a chair to sit on. She said that God was giving her a chair because she loved Him, but my mom just laughed, derisively.

I know more intimately what my other family members mean to me. Not her.

Writing like Hemingway

I noticed a book at Barnes & Noble yesterday to teach people how to write like Hemingway. I sat down with it for a while. It spoke a lot about how literary devices, his writing style, sentences structure, Iceberg Theory. Then I noticed I really don't want to write like Hemingway. Aside from our subject matters, I don't think it's cool to be evasive, indirect and short. Words already fail us so often, I just don't have the patience to create something out of other people's imaginations rather than the ideas that I already struggle with transmitting. Better pick up some Fitzgerald or Poe.

And speaking of writing, I just read John Richardson's piece in Esquire: The Last Abortion Doctor. One might think this is an article about abortion, but it spoke so truly about related topics such as medicine, politics, gender and pain. It's really hard to read. It's probably the best thing I've read in a long time. I do think that all feeling human beings need to read it, especially now, just to understand a little bit more about what life is.

Now is always the time for immature idealism.

I reject anything else.

I find myself reading a lot about Obama's visits to see Putin and Medvedev. I know about Obama's youthful idealism. I'd bet a lot of people empathize and identify with it. It's something I feel like I know.

What would it be like if we always had a foot in what is impossible? What good could we accomplish? Would we mess it up? Maybe, but I don't usually consider that. What if we recognized this in everyone, at all times? Could we be more honest? Could we let go of what holds us back?

I'd also like to take the time to say that this article is really, really worth reading. If only I could write with my feet nailed to the concrete.

I'm afraid of people.

There, I said it. I'm absolutely terrified. There are stories like this one. It doesn't have to be about family, and it doesn't have to be about Michael Jackson. But what scares me is that these sagas of trouble and hurtful waters can be about anyone else. It happens all the time. Most of the time, we only summon the courage, at best, to write about it.

What a shame that we don't develop our social minds with perfectly identical connections and thresholds, so that we can always see and predict the mutual effects of people on people just by examining ourselves. Instead, we must learn how to express ourselves and our concerns in the dark, and be limited by what we don't know. The fact that this is frustrating doesn't bother me as much as the fact that it's dangerous.

We are really, really powerful beings. Like giants, we don't always see what we break under our feet. We grow into such great creatures by wrapping ourselves in layers and layers of socialized tendencies like onions. We don't know what is on our skin, sometimes ever. And it's scary walking with giants who can't feel their skins. It's absolutely terrifying.

And so by my theory there's a bunch of large, clumsy, lumbering creatures who step on each other and don't truly feel the way we interact. We hurt and punish, even loving all the while. We can treat other people like how we'd like to be treated ourselves, but unless we understand ourselves, we don't have the right to treat anyone in any way at all. Maybe it's safest to be awkward and evasive.

If you're wrapped really tightly, please, let go. I'm working on my own layers, but I'm also getting really paranoid.

Nostalgia by consumption

It was the birthday of the girl I was dating. We made a huge dinner together, and I took her to a surprise birthday party an hour or so late. That weekend, we broke up. The next week, I bought a box of bagged teas that I used to drink in her room. I finished half of it before beginning to see her again.

I'm drinking this tea right now. Ordinarily, I only drink loose leaf teas. It's flavored "lemon ginger", but only contains "natural lemon and licorice flavors" and citric acid. It smells like pepper and cinnamon. I don't know why I drink this.

The way we love

I grew up in more or less a prude, sans-romance family setting. The kind where mothers cover their kids' eyes when kissy scenes are on television. This was never lost on my sister and me. Even though out loud we said "ewww" to a lot of these things, we always wanted have crushes, kiss people, all those good things we'd been hearing about.

I think my first relationships were a little dangerously conducted as a result. (This is also where I stop being able to speak to my sister's experience.) The only thing to do was to carry out the motions rehearsed to us and set ourselves up for a crisis each time. So people came and went, with varying levels of acceptance from the parents. We never heard their story, how they met, how they grew close, how they came to love one another. (We know now.) We just knew to find people by ourselves, to be attentive and devoted, to give unconditionally, until personal neuroses were revealed and pain takes hold, and then quit and start over.

A few months ago, my mother found out about both of our relationships at the time. We were both about to steal away with our romantic counterparts somewhere far from home. She didn't disapprove this time, but didn't understand why we would do things like this to ourselves. It's not like you're going to marry this person, she said. Why trouble yourselves? Why put so much effort into improbabilities of sentiment and emotion? Sitting next to her, I felt silly for having grown up at all without her wisdom. Kind of sheepishly, I told her that this is how we love.

We love as if there is only one soul out there for us. We look for people as if the world is so small and so cold that it'd be wiser to hook onto the nearest body and hope mutual fascination occurs. And we risk everything for this. We love as if it's a limited resource based on functions of population, time and age. What we really can do now is to unlearn everything.

Forgetting

Ms. Williamson wrote in the book I mentioned previously that the mantra we should really be following is to let go. Okay. But letting go is a strategy that starts to smell. Isn't it relinquishing the urgency of now? Won't I lose what little I've grasped from the situation at hand? Letting go is awfully hard right now.

Letting go will feel like forgetting. I'm afraid that to relax is to not learn how I may better conduct myself. Will I suffer less in the future? Will I make the same mistakes? How long will I have to keep trying?

And ultimately, won't we all forget?

Reflections on A Return To Love

A few things have stuck out to me.

1. Loving feels pretty good. Giving even more than receiving.
2. Fear, indeed, is the antagonist to love. Being fearful or afraid sucks a lot.
3. Judgment is disgusting. To judge another is a sad thing.
4. Money is nothing. Not good or bad, just nothing.
5. We have a long way to go towards knowing love. And God, for that matter, though this distinction really a disguise.

After I took out this book for the first time with my family in China, my sister pounced. "Why are you reading a spiritual guidance book?" Lol. I said, "It's not really a spiritual guidance book."

Wow, I'm sorry.

Those last posts were absurdly depressing. I'll try not to pull that shit again, as I'm no longer a moody teenager. (Well...)