More from my friend bean. Hey, you've got my Saturday space. :)
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"What is love?" That was the title and chorus of a really cheesy song from the late 80s, by some lame-ass singer named Haddaway. It was really a Stock Aitken Waterman-type number posing as a house track. But it asks a good question.
So what is love?
I subscribe to something I call the "grass greener" syndrome, which is that people always want what they don't have, that what they see on someone else's plate always looks tastier than what they have on their own. Sometimes, even if they know better. And so it is with love.
I wanted love. I wanted to be loved. I found someone who loved me, who loved me in a fashion and manner that surprised and shocked me with its purity and innocence. Or perhaps amounting the same thing, with its naivete. It was also that quality of purity, innocence and naivete that got to me, drove me away from that person, because it became the foundation for a defensive, self-justifying, self-aggrandising belief that that person was the only person in my life who had ever really, really loved me, that all the other people I have been involved with had treated me badly and had hurt me terribly.
That last bit is true. I think on any objective measurement, I have been mistreated and badly hurt in the past. I don't deny that. But at the same time, there are very many ways of being mistreated and hurt. And I'm not free of that right now, either.
It is simply not true that because someone hurts you, that person does not or has never loved you. It is a cliched truth, that the line between love and hate is frighteningly thin. With one person, I have crossed and keep crossing that line with disturbing frequency. That tells me that I am either psychotic and unstable, or I really love that person.
I pick the latter.
Those who know me well, know I can have a short fuse and a volatile temper, that inter-personal relationships are not something I am instinctively good at whenever I am tired, distracted or upset. But for this person, this special person who still commands a special place in my heart, I was willing to be yelled at over the phone, unreasonably in my opinion. I was willing to be scolded and screamed at for another person's words. I was willing to stay through all that, gritting my teeth, reining in my temper. Yet, at the end of it all, I was still willing to offer unqualified advice and unlimited help. I was still willing to pull out all the stops for this person.
And to date, I have never reproached this person for treating me in that manner.
Whereas with most other people, I would simply have told them in no uncertain terms to calm down, and if that had failed (as it did with this person) I would simply have told the person to call me back when he/she was ready to listen to me and then I would have hung up. Because I have neither the desire nor the temperament to be a punching bag for another person's frustration, unless that was a person that I truly, deeply loved.
So it hurts extra-hard, when in my moment of extreme need, I was shunted aside, ignored, forgotten. Given the benefit of a few minutes of a phone call, the bare assertion that dinner would always be bad for her, and the promise of a lunch appointment that has not materialised to date and does not look like surfacing anytime soon, if at all.
Increasingly nowadays, I think to myself, maybe I am really, really "jian". "Jian" is a Mandarin word, that means "cheap" with overtones of being pathetic. A "jian" person is someone who asks, even begs, for abuse. I feel like that on certain days at certain times.
What is love?
+++
"What is love?" That was the title and chorus of a really cheesy song from the late 80s, by some lame-ass singer named Haddaway. It was really a Stock Aitken Waterman-type number posing as a house track. But it asks a good question.
So what is love?
I subscribe to something I call the "grass greener" syndrome, which is that people always want what they don't have, that what they see on someone else's plate always looks tastier than what they have on their own. Sometimes, even if they know better. And so it is with love.
I wanted love. I wanted to be loved. I found someone who loved me, who loved me in a fashion and manner that surprised and shocked me with its purity and innocence. Or perhaps amounting the same thing, with its naivete. It was also that quality of purity, innocence and naivete that got to me, drove me away from that person, because it became the foundation for a defensive, self-justifying, self-aggrandising belief that that person was the only person in my life who had ever really, really loved me, that all the other people I have been involved with had treated me badly and had hurt me terribly.
That last bit is true. I think on any objective measurement, I have been mistreated and badly hurt in the past. I don't deny that. But at the same time, there are very many ways of being mistreated and hurt. And I'm not free of that right now, either.
It is simply not true that because someone hurts you, that person does not or has never loved you. It is a cliched truth, that the line between love and hate is frighteningly thin. With one person, I have crossed and keep crossing that line with disturbing frequency. That tells me that I am either psychotic and unstable, or I really love that person.
I pick the latter.
Those who know me well, know I can have a short fuse and a volatile temper, that inter-personal relationships are not something I am instinctively good at whenever I am tired, distracted or upset. But for this person, this special person who still commands a special place in my heart, I was willing to be yelled at over the phone, unreasonably in my opinion. I was willing to be scolded and screamed at for another person's words. I was willing to stay through all that, gritting my teeth, reining in my temper. Yet, at the end of it all, I was still willing to offer unqualified advice and unlimited help. I was still willing to pull out all the stops for this person.
And to date, I have never reproached this person for treating me in that manner.
Whereas with most other people, I would simply have told them in no uncertain terms to calm down, and if that had failed (as it did with this person) I would simply have told the person to call me back when he/she was ready to listen to me and then I would have hung up. Because I have neither the desire nor the temperament to be a punching bag for another person's frustration, unless that was a person that I truly, deeply loved.
So it hurts extra-hard, when in my moment of extreme need, I was shunted aside, ignored, forgotten. Given the benefit of a few minutes of a phone call, the bare assertion that dinner would always be bad for her, and the promise of a lunch appointment that has not materialised to date and does not look like surfacing anytime soon, if at all.
Increasingly nowadays, I think to myself, maybe I am really, really "jian". "Jian" is a Mandarin word, that means "cheap" with overtones of being pathetic. A "jian" person is someone who asks, even begs, for abuse. I feel like that on certain days at certain times.
What is love?
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