Love it, change it, or leave it.
This afternoon I had an insightful conversation with a very nice German man. This happens to me often in life due to my social butterfly nature. I never meet a stranger and can usually strike up a conversation with anyone about anything. It is from these random great conversations that I walk away with new outlooks on life and such. After he allowed me to chatter on about life for longer than most would, he stopped me and said, "I want to tell you something that is the one rule in life you should go by above everything else. Love it, change it, or leave it."
I have been known to throw my heart into things when most would say I shouldn't. I, however, believe that everyone should fall in love with as many things as they can when they can. Most people go through life being too scared to do that and I will never be one of those people. Perhaps it is the "change it" part that I struggle with. I hold such high expectations for those things that I love and want them to just be right. I seem to forget that sometimes to make what we love right we have to make the effort for it to be the way we want it. That means changing your circumstances to get what you want.
How do we determine whether what we love is worth the change? We can't. It's always going to be a guessing game as to whether the choice we make for love will be worth it in the end. If we aren't willing to even chance the change, then we should leave it. Because loving something and resisting the change to make it right is pointless. And who has time for lost causes? They say, "Practice what you preach" but I know even as I write this that the "leave it" part has always been my weakness. It doesn't matter if my brain says, "Love it, change it, or leave it" because my heart will always win. I can't leave anything that my heart goes after. I'd rather it leave me. I'll take that hurt over being the one who walks away and wonders "What if?" Yet, if I'm not willing to change it for my benefit then why am I loving it at all? Am I only punishing myself to love something I know can never change? Perhaps. But, I'll take the pain in exchange for all the other ways it makes me happy. The love is greater than everything else. The love is the spark inside that I turn to when everything else is going wrong. Even if that's wrong, at least it gives me the hope I need to get through each day.
So, despite the great advice from the German, there are some things I love that I refuse to leave even if I'm not able to change them. If that makes me a fool, then I'm okay with that. At least for now.
-ldw
Monday, September 19, 2011
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
image of desire...
"We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them." - Anais Nin
We long for others to see us, accept us, and love us for who we are. Yet, often times we do not give them the same courtesy. We see a person the way we want to see them. Particularly if we are attracted to them, we see a created persona and sometimes that is not at all what that person is really made of. We feel a spark and hope the chemistry is mutual. So, we romanticize the simplest of gestures or actions into something they aren't. We confuse a passing glance, a brush of the hand, or a shared smile as something more than happenstance.
Every person comes to us as an untouched piece of marble. Like a sculptor, we survey the piece of marble before ever putting a chisel to it. We create in our minds what we want to make out of this person and this is perhaps our greatest flaw.
Once we realize a person may not appear to be who we thought they were, that's when we start to chip away carelessly. We become more desperate to mold them into our desired image we started with. We can only live inside our own heads for so long until reality sets in and that person shows us their true image. It isn't usually their fault. It's ours for letting our imaginations get the best of us. I doubt it's a habit we can overcome, especially if you're a romantic like me. Because I always have the hope that one day that image I create for my object of desire will fit him perfectly....that my ideal piece of marble can be carved to reveal what I've been looking for all along.
Alas, we find ourselves disappointed. Because at the end of the day, who can really satisfy our ideal image? No one. We have to see and accept others for what they are or else we'll never be happy. But isn't that what love is supposed to be like? Accepting someone for exactly who they are and loving them anyway. Once we learn to do that, I think we'll find that things will fit more perfectly than we had previously thought they could. If we are to be sculptors, then we should just start chiseling away to get to the core. Discover everything you can about your "piece of marble" and see if it's a project worth pursuing. There's no room for disappointment when there's beautiful art to be made.
-ldw
We long for others to see us, accept us, and love us for who we are. Yet, often times we do not give them the same courtesy. We see a person the way we want to see them. Particularly if we are attracted to them, we see a created persona and sometimes that is not at all what that person is really made of. We feel a spark and hope the chemistry is mutual. So, we romanticize the simplest of gestures or actions into something they aren't. We confuse a passing glance, a brush of the hand, or a shared smile as something more than happenstance.
Every person comes to us as an untouched piece of marble. Like a sculptor, we survey the piece of marble before ever putting a chisel to it. We create in our minds what we want to make out of this person and this is perhaps our greatest flaw.
Once we realize a person may not appear to be who we thought they were, that's when we start to chip away carelessly. We become more desperate to mold them into our desired image we started with. We can only live inside our own heads for so long until reality sets in and that person shows us their true image. It isn't usually their fault. It's ours for letting our imaginations get the best of us. I doubt it's a habit we can overcome, especially if you're a romantic like me. Because I always have the hope that one day that image I create for my object of desire will fit him perfectly....that my ideal piece of marble can be carved to reveal what I've been looking for all along.
Alas, we find ourselves disappointed. Because at the end of the day, who can really satisfy our ideal image? No one. We have to see and accept others for what they are or else we'll never be happy. But isn't that what love is supposed to be like? Accepting someone for exactly who they are and loving them anyway. Once we learn to do that, I think we'll find that things will fit more perfectly than we had previously thought they could. If we are to be sculptors, then we should just start chiseling away to get to the core. Discover everything you can about your "piece of marble" and see if it's a project worth pursuing. There's no room for disappointment when there's beautiful art to be made.
-ldw
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