12.22.05

Leading the introspective life in restraint of emotional excess is not a life void of love or passion.

"Life is a comedy for those who think

and a tragedy for those who feel."

Horace Walpole

The topic at the dinner table last night was "leading with your heart" versus "leading with your head." What defines how you are doing what? Who is to say they are exclusively separate ways of coming to a decision? Seeing that emotions can be indulgent and demanding, how can one say that they are on the path of truth and free of ego?

I know a boy who is always in love with a new girl each week. I know a girl who falls in love every few months. They both get engaged in relationships that consume them and then fall out of love and are next considering a new adventure. I have a difficult time keeping up with their lastest crush.

I've only considered ONE relationship to pursue since I've graduated from high school. And that is the mathematician. I've only one crush since grade school... and that is the mathmatician.

I sometimes wish I could "fall in love" every few months and be excited about a new person but that has never been the case.... except for the mathematician. He has been the invisible current that has inspired a great deal from me... If I was a different sort of girl, maybe we would have followed one of many formats....dinners, movies, drinks... blah blah blah.

That would consume a lot of time.

I couldn't play my life that way only to start another repetition of intense dramas and then no enduring friendship to speak of afterwards. It is perhaps another style of living and it works for people who are more "feely feely," suited to a more tactile experience and in need of possession or in need to be possessed. I don't know. Most of my failed relationships of yesterday are my successful friendships that endure today.

What does falling in love every few months or weeks offer? I don't have the patience to give myself over to that and I don't think my mathematician has such impulses either...

I wouldn't have been able to dance, work on my writing or music, or been part of the things I am involved with today that is important to me right now. He wouldn't be involved with his work at school and the embassy. And he is up to more things than I.

We're up to experiencing life and growing up within our respective worlds...

To be compelled to follow the other format works for a lot of people but it doesn't work for my path. It may seem odd. We may seem cold. It is demanding in some respects and every bit as vulnerable as love should be, teaching lessons on patience, trust, kindness.

Love is more than just companionship, an excuse to explain a relationship pulse and a sure date.

It is not about "a relationship".... it is about a relationship to life and with life.

JNET

"How can there be any questioning of acquiring or possessing

when the one thing needful for a man is to become -

to be at last and to die in the fullness of his being."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery