Loving Fearlessly II

I was recently having a conversation with my mom when she said, “you know, Bryce, you often go on about how selfish you are, but I really don’t think you’re selfish enough, especially when it comes to love.”

Don’t cast your pearls among swine. Not everyone deserves to see who you are.

All that.

And yet, here I am, a notch before 26 years of age, doing the very same things that have been questionable in the past. I am an open book. I’m rarely demanding, outside of a select few baseline necessities, and I am quick to love.

Let’s backtrack. My last post concerning love spoke of my tendency in the past to create functional exchanges moonlighting as true love. I found myself in unions which were really nothing more than marketplaces for fond feelings and special hugs. Through my own maturation and self-reflection I realized that as much of an open book as I was, I was still intensely guarded, intently selfish, and unfair in my dealings.

However, what I was adept at doing was opening myself to become empathic to the concerns of the woman I was involved with. It wasn’t unusual to see me walking miles to go see someone or waking up at all hours of the night just to be a shoulder to cry on. I’ve always been someone that others confide in and that goes doubly so in relationships; I very quickly become someone’s convenient refuge.

Convenient. Very, very important difference. Per the aforementioned words of my mother, I was usually nothing more than temporary solace in some beautiful young woman’s development. The reason why is actually the topic I want to introduce today. For me, decisions are an ongoing process, like a feedback loop, which begins the moment a person enters into my life. That entrance is rarely romantic. For instance, if I meet a young woman in class, then her presence is now calculated into my greater understanding of humanity. The moment I meet someone, I consider whether I would ever date them, take them seriously, enjoy their company, grab a coffee, etc. As we get to know each other more and more, I will literally vet everything they express to me and draw some tentative conclusion. Lets say that we agree to begin dating, that process only intensifies; now, with more face time and more interaction, I am able to scour the deepest recesses of her soul to see if I see any compatibility.

Thus, most people tell me I tend to move too quickly. For a while, I agreed, now I am ambivalent. Life is too dynamic to ascribe some set of rules to metaphysical conduct.

In my eyes, all things boil down to will, a concept I expressed in my last love related post. What people want to do, they will do, even if that thing is destructive or unconscionably hard. Becoming vulnerable for most folks is an unbearable process; so much pain and so much hurt is put on the line for the possibility of being rejected or maliciously wounded. For most, if not all people, they need to unfurl their person in bits, always holding the cards close to their chest in case of a quick escape or painless exit.

Yet, even science agree that it takes men a very short time and woman a little longer, but still incredibly short amount of time to know if they love someone.

I ascribe ultimate judiciary power to the mind, therefore, this poses a very curious paradox. The mind, usually unconsciously, can love virtually instanteously, yet, the conscious mind, the lying mind, the deceptive mind, causes itself to remain cautious in the name of protectionism. The unconscious mind is absolutely unconcerned with matters of utility; it is a violent world of prescience and intuition which are rarely concerned with anything even closely resembling conscious utility. Of coure, most of us spend more time examining our conscious minds, as any access to the unconscious is rather dubious scientifically speaking…

Fear.

The conscious mind’s obsession with maximum utility, or maximum profit, stems from its need to reduce fear. I am speaking of fear on all levels, not just those associated with terror. Fear is actually the opposite of love; whereas love can permit itself to be exchanged and flourish without concern for reward, fear is constantly concerned with status quo and reciprocation. To love truly is to not be concerned with whether or not love will be returned to you; it is a permanent state of oneness with one’s self and their surroundings. When you love someone, you wish to integrate them into your self. You wish them to become an extension of you and you an extension of them.

Fear precludes this from happening. Fear is the voice which which reminds you that you are too young, too damaged, too ugly, too fat, too cool, too this or too that. Fear will keep you paralyzed and force you into romantic exchanges which are resolutely functional. The basis of functional relationships is the fear of given in too deeply.

I spend some an obscene amount of time in my own mind that I am confident when I make a decision to love a woman. Historically, I have been fearful of their ability to love me in return, hence my propensity to enter functional exchanges. I always know that I love purely, but I haven’t always been sure that this would be returned to me. Thus, I laid the foundation for discovering what true love was, loving without obsessing over whether or not this would be returned, yet, I was still fearful and ultimately gave into protecting myself.

So what, bryce? Are you advocating freely giving myself out to anyone I get butterflies around? Absolutely not, that would not be wise. However, I am advocating a pure expression of who you are at all times, not playing the game of “getting to know” people. Imagine if people got into the habit of actually exhibiting who they were from the jump? That would be amazing would it not?

However, people don’t do that, ulterior motives still dominate the social world, and fear still eats at us all. So, in order to resolve this dissonance, I wager that we should get in the habit of being extremely observant of our surroundings. When you meet someone, look for who they truly are, because no matter how dynamic a personality, they will reveal bits of their character that penetrate down to the bone. Look for moments of vulnerability that don’t directly concern you and watch how they respond. Look at how they treat someone of lesser status or position than them. Watch how they treat their peers, how they treat others of their same sex or the opposing sex. Spend as much time as you can putting yourself in their shoes, reconstructing their story per the specifications you are aware of, then look into your heart to see where you are.

If they’re a bad person after you’ve gone through this process make the decision to walk away. If they’re a good person with a lot of rough edges, make the decision to stay. Make the decision to join them on their journey. Don’t fear whether they will love you in return or not, something too few of us are capable of doing. Be judicious about your time and your resources, don’t allow yourself to be used, but allow yourself to be available.

Life is not complicated, humans are. Be the simplicity in someone else’s life. Be the consistency in their life. If you choose to be with someone, be with them. Whether things work out or they don’t is irrelevant. Sow seeds of selfless love and be prepared to reap serious blessings in all aspects of your life.

bryce

My world

Never possessive,
But through the progressive successes of how my heart expresses,
You will find the extensive expansion of my feelings suggestive.

It is not I that owns you,
But you that owns I, you, lay apple of my eye,
You, persuasive spider, and I subjected fly.

Perfect entanglement, I have willed you to hold me,
My soul, see, has solely placed trust in your molding,
Boldly I implore thee to wholly explore me.

I adore thee so I abhor the thought of you ever leaving,
Therefore, seeing my cleaving as a truth to believe in,
I hold you close, as my own, my world, my seasons.

The Anatomy of True Love

I really intended not to write anything on the topic of love for some time, however, a certain mood has stricken me and I feel it necessary to address love’s “dimensions.”

Humans are a myriad of things; by our very nature, we are all things and no things. That is to say, much like the light we visually perceive, we embody almost any mental state. At any given time in abstract perceptual space, one can configure a “location” that loosely correlates to happiness, sadness, anger, and so forth; it is imperative that we understand this principle. As opposed to searching for “exact”, point-positions we should opt for models of human behavior that see people as millions of dialectical processes. The dialectic points to a fluidity of human expression as opposed to a strict, “James is a ________,” or “I am a ________.”

When considering the equally abstract dimensions of love, the same rules must be applied. We tend to equate love to a very regimented set of principles of exchange; there is a time, there is an emotional component, there is an illogical component, and so forth. We attempt to wager with reality when discussing how we are to fall in love or what exactly it even is.

A human is rife with internal mechanisms he or she does not truly understand. When they inevitably effervesce, the individual is then charged with the task of reconciling these ambiguous motivations. Deep within all of us there are anxieties and compulsions, idiosyncrasies and virtues, which will volcanically burst free as we continue to engage life. They are like latent mechanisms, coming to the fore only after some vaguely understood period of gestation, and making sense of them is a battle for even the most adroit thinker.

Due to these intractable issues of self-knowledge, interaction between two people generally becomes a game of power and a market for exchange. There are utility functions and values assigned to all points of interaction; a woman makes you feel good about your appearance or a man is there to listen to your problems after a long day. Romantic encounters are like job interviews or trips to the supermarket; we go in searching for something and try to create reciprocal value systems.

This, in my humble opinion, is the progenitor of the dismal romantic environment we humans tend to create. Whether it is organized marriage between families or the madhouse of “dating” we have in the West today, love is a domain where humans attempt to trade value. It is “point-specific”; I exchange this for this. I expect this for this. You do this and I this. We fall into roles and typifications and we continue to operate as individual selves cooperating tangentially with this significant other for some attainable end.

I have had to end this crazy cycle for myself. I, too, saw romantic interactions as forays into value creation; I saw the women I dated as little more than functions, albeit highly important ones, to achieve an expected end. When I say, “function,” I need you to understand that I do not mean this in a rote or materialistic way. Functions can be anything from emotive to supportive, they are dimensional models to express some unique expectation out of that person. For me, the functions that these women tended to embody were my need to have an important object of desire and collaborator in life. As someone who is emotionally detached and very reserved in my affective capital, these women became the incarnation of what I desired to be the apex of human creation. They were muses and co-creators of reality.

However, I still treated them as individual agents of trade. I still expected reciprocity and a particular exchange rate. I still expected to pinpoint them in perceptual space and engage in some ongoing dialogue about optimality. I still expected things out of them which dictated my perception of their usage in my life. Those who stopped inspiring me, those who stopped serving that function were effectively useless. They were functionally obsolete and I discarded them as such. Perhaps I would be sad, experience a bout of melancholy, but I always assured myself that I made the “best” decision for myself.

It wasn’t until my last girlfriend that I began to do away with this mechanized model of engagement, but old habits die hard. We still expected things out of one another and acted with strict adherence to our modes of discipline. Thus, we were inevitably doomed to simply serve as useful or un-useful with respect to one another.

I see this in almost every interaction I see; I see it in the interactions I am involved with now. There is a distinct need to preserve one’s self while simulating the process of giving in to another because of some misunderstood feeling. Even when someone “good” comes into our lives, we sober ourselves behind a well thought out exchange system in which we are “ready” or “not ready.”

I don’t see myself as ready or not ready any longer. I’m not concerned with if a woman is ready or not ready any longer. There is no such thing as ready or not ready; there is only a will to do or a will not to do. If someone chooses to do something, it is now on the shoulders of both individuals to create an environment in which they dimensionally harmonize. If you think you are “not ready” to do something, it is because you do not want to do it. Don’t ascribe power to ambiguous emotions and compulsions that are nothing more than derivatives of your will. You can and will do what you want to do. You will not do what you do not want to do.

Most of us are completely fine with engaging in functional love, but complain when these interactions fail to thrive. True love needs no function; it is a pure reality in which two people choose (with all definitions of choose being extant) to engage one another. The only exchange that occurs is one’s self for the other’s self; true love is not a Chinese takeout menu. You take the entire combination or you do not take the entire combination.

Functional love has its place in the greater domain of love; many people have no will to truly give in to another. However, for those that delude themselves into believing true love, yet only cultivate functional exchanges, their time is being wasted. True love is purely holistic, it explicitly requires the relinquishing of self and ego for the greater superstructure of harmony. There is no “I” or “you,” there is “us.” When a person begins to frustrate or chafe the other, true love, again, cannot be a conversation about “pro’s” and “cons.” You will choose to continue or you will choose not to.

Functional love is more about having an object to denote than it is about having an extension of one’s self. Functional love preserves the self and preserves individual motivations and rates of exchange; it is true to its name.

If one loves another truly, they are not concerned about the things they like or dislike; those aren’t even terms that matter. There is a requisite need for that other like a vital organ or lifeblood. If there are things that aren’t liked, they are treated as minor annoyances; you don’t sell the house because there is a fly in the kitchen, you work through the process of killing the fly and closing the door behind you when you go in or out. Even the problems that seem unbearable are minor annoyances; there is always a solution if you love each other truly.

If there is asymmetry, if one loves true and the other functionally, it is again a question of will. There is no right, wrong, or otherwise. If you choose to, then you will.

This is the anatomy of true love or how I see it. I say all of this out of a heavy heart because I myself am being forced to see how my construction of reality has precluded me from tasting the delicious fruits of a peaceful mind and soul. I have been so tethered to the notion of exchange that I go veritably mad when I experience even the slightest bit of hesitation from my clearly thought out, rational exchange system. When I feel a woman hesitate or regress I am incensed to the point of madness. I have experienced the pain of abandonment too often and I attempt to avoid that unbearable pain by upholding a strict marketplace of reciprocal value. I, historically, cannot and will not continue to engage a woman unless she is equal with me in terms of expression and content. I use this parity as a standard of our vitality; a disparity signals a failing economy and I am the first to abandon ship. I have, thusly, never experienced true love because I have never laid the foundation for it.

Lets face it, my real problem is trust. I have refused to trust someone to do things I cannot see. I don’t trust moves that are three or four turns ahead because in the back of my mind, if things were to go awry I will say, “I shouldn’t have done this.” There is a nagging pessimism in my mind because I cannot trust other people’s mental states. I fully embody introspection illusion; I trust my own excavations into mental space, but I place absolutely no value on anyone else’s ability to do so.

So, instead of putting my faith in these shifting sands, I created a mental framework of pure, beautiful symmetry; you do this and I do this. We do this together. A beautiful harmony based on latent trust; a functional love. When that function ceased to function, it was time to move on.

I am now shackled to this scarier — no, terrifying — form of intimacy. One in which I completely fall backwards into an abstract space from which I may not be able to escape. I’m not concerned about finding “the one” or “a soul mate” because as I fall, that person will be presented to me, in all her existential glory.

bryce

Soul Mates

Today we celebrate the miracle of motherhood. Millions across the nation are taking to social media to express their gratitude towards the great women who have been instrumental in their development. I, myself, am blessed to have had an incredible mother and quite frankly, a host of strong maternal figures from my grandmother, godmothers, and sister.

When we celebrate motherhood, we are celebrating one half of the primary unit which guides our development. The paternal unit, mother and father, act in tandem to create an environment of stability, nurturing, and exploration. A strong upbringing usually combines these components in a way which nurtures out certain characteristics in a child, a clear causal link between progeny and the live they come to lead.

Tacit in the conversation about mother and fatherhood is that the unit, given our current socializing conventions, should display a love and affection for one another that teaches a child how to make a relationship work. Motherhood is usually construed as the nurturing part of the development, with fatherhood supplying a supportive rigidity, a call to responsibility, and a unquestioned protectorate; this is certainly what I grew up with.

Thusly, do soul mates exist?

The idea of a soul mate is usually associated with either religious connotation or some deep metaphyiscal quiddity. It states, in a sense, that we are consecrated for a particular man or woman; set apart from the entire body of humanity for one person in particular, a person whose construction compliments ours.

From a strictly humanistic context, this is a classic case of reducing cognitive dissonance. There is nothing scarier than thinking about the sheer amount of people in the world and how exactly we can justify choosing one person or another. This is true whether one is single or committed; when single, one doesn’t know who to commit to, when committed, one doesn’t know if its worth it to stay committed. Therefore, the idea of a soul mate or the one appeals to many as it drastically reduces the ambiguity and intrinisic doubt generated by the idea of companionship. It also, conversely, gives rise to another set of dissonances, since it restricts behavior in a sometimes disparaging way.

However, from a holistic context, that is a contextual consideration which attempts to reconcile as much of the human condition as possible, the idea of a soul mate takes on a distinctively different flavor. I have come to term my philosophy integrativism as it seeks a integrative approach across perceptual, social, and physical domains. One of the major tenets of the philosophy is that people create meaning for themselves; there is no universal meaning, no constant purpose, that can be perfectly relatable from person to person. Given that our current evolutionary status has us existing as innately interpretive creatures, it is implausible that we can subscribe to a unitary meaning of life.

What does this mean for the idea of a soul mate or “the one”? Does it preclude them from existing? Not necessarily. Before one can integrate, one must reduce or deconstruct, therefore, I have spent a great deal of time fastidiously taking apart what is the ultimate goal of finding the one. As aforementioned, some of it is a reasonable construct to reduce the fear of futility, however, another functional component is that there are certain folks who bring out the best in us.

With so much variation from one person to another, one is bound to find those that conflict and those that compliment. The idea of the one is that there is someone out there whose compliment approaches perfect synergy. I have no problem believing that such a person exists for us all. Without needing to reference an ancient creation myth, I can very well see how this is functionally possible.

However, the universe is still just as mystical and awe-inspiring as it is anything else. Whether one believes in a Being who sets things in motion or they subscribe to rote evolution, there is no doubt in anyones mind that there is so much that we do not understand. There can be confluence spiritually and there can be confluence biologically or socially.

I choose to believe in both without attaching a primacy to either.

When I think about a soul mate or the one, the illustrious unum, I am spirited away by the idea of the miracle of this unlikelihood. Here we are, a species with infinite potential to create, engage, and attach meaning too and although we can by stochastic occurrence end up with anyone, there is someone out there who will benefit us far greater than the average person. Here, the average person loosely translates as an everyday human with some partial relevancies to one’s self.

I believe that when soul mates come together, they create a bond that directly aids in the miracle of motherhood and fatherhood. Those who find such supreme oneness with one another are undoubtedly experiencing life much different than their counterparts. As every person is a veritable treasure trove of resources, two people coming together to support one another is a beautiful thing.

Finding the one is the difficult mechanism to explain. I can talk all day about the theoretical basis for their existence, but how can I help someone actually locate them? My suggestion is this. The one can be anybody, therefore, discovering them starts with discovering yourself first. You can never truly know someone else until you have become a master of yourself. Does this mean that one has to know themselves before true love occurs? No, of course not, many people find themselves while on the path of true love. But there is a focus change, one should be completely honest about who and what they are. Nothing precludes true love more than deceit, deceiving one’s self is just as invidious as deceiving another.

Finding one’s soul mate comes with finding one’s self. From there your thoughts and actions are authentic representations of who you are and you will attract others like you. If you are in tune with yourself, in tune with your spirit, then you will know who sits well with you and who does not. I can guarantee that with concentrated effort over an indefinite amount of time you will find that person.

Are there more than one, “one’s”? A curious notion first put forth by a close friend of mine. He feels that the man or woman in your life may be there only for a time and as everything changes they may exit at some point. I tend to disagree because I fundamentally assume that a soul mate is a life bond; someone who is beneficial in your life for a time is simply someone who you found much relevancy in. It does not satisfy the conditions I place on the definitions of a soul mate.

Great mothers are also people who come to know themselves. They are authentic in their love for their child because that child deserves no deceit. To discover one’s “one” is to discover the person that synergizes with who you truly are. Perhaps you are one obsessed with a power dynamic, there the one is that person who will either submit or cause you to deepen your understanding of power. Perhaps you are afraid of abandonment; you one will be the person that sticks to you unconditionally, embodying stability in even the most tumultuous times.

When you know yourself, you create the meanings that validate your existence. You create thoughts that maximize your time here. From there, the mechanisms turn and its up to you to capture the moments you’ve incepted.

bryce

The King in Me

I have been given charge over her heart.
I welcome this post gladly, for surely,
There has never been another so elegantly blessed
With a beauty that makes even the heavenly bodies envious.

I do so joyously.
Boyishly, I fall asleep dreaming of her lying next to me,
Pressed to me, practically, becoming part of me,
For it pains me to be apart from she.

Safe in my hands her heart will be.
For I understand that this love, it starts with me.
It started the, moment I gave in to the startling
Realization that she had awoken the King in me.