Faith vs Fear
So my woman and I got into it last night. Why we got into the fight really doesn’t matter all that much in the grand scheme of things, typical relationship type shit, but what I encountered, internally, in the middle of a heated argument is what’s more important. I was left this morning, still despaired, after sleeping in the other room, feeling like I had possibly moved too fast into our relationship, again, not assessing a person on their actions, on their current level of evolvement, or who they are in their life at that moment, but again, more so based on the potential I see in them… This sort of accepting someone in has been at the seat of every major disappointment I have ever encountered with people. I give all of myself to someone once I let them into my heart, be it a friend, or a lover, so in the midst of this heated argument, or the morning after when/as it was still unresolved, my mind floated to the possibility of the relationship ending, either by her abandoning it, or by me giving up on it feeling like we’re on too different of levels, now. I love her. I know she’s who I want to be with, but I sometimes feel, especially at times like this, that she has long to go before fully being on a level of true understanding with me on many important things. Immediately though, I look inward to see my own involvement, error, responsibility, tendencies that have often brought me right here. I think of circumstances, memories, and moments with either, ex-girlfriends, ex-friends, my sisters, my mother, even my father, and I know its not that simple. It never is…
But still, its this thing in me that I find, every time I look at each time my heart has ever been broken, be it either by a lover, a friend, or members of my family, I see them for their potential, I see the good in them, I see their best intentions, whether they live up to those intentions, or not… I heard someone say, long ago, that people judge others on their actions, but themselves on their intentions. This is the way of the hypocrite, but it is also the way most people in this world, sadly, are. Its easy to see something someone else does that’s ‘wrong’ as wrong, because there it is in front of you, but as far as yourself goes, you know what’s in your head, in your ‘heart,’ so if you happen to fall short in your actions, you can comfort yourself with the knowledge of what your best intentions were, and then justify any actions of ‘less than impeccable integrity’ and move on… This is the true definition of a hypocrite, but the fallacy in this lies in justifying your own actions by your intentions, not in judging others by theirs. To judge someone by their actions is the way the world works, and, in my opinion, the way it probably should work, although I know I fall short of this all too often. I often try to put myself in someone else’s shoes, at least for the people I’ve let into my life, and justify, for them, their actions, and more often without their even asking me to. I just offer it up, wanting to give them, in most cases, the benefit of whatever doubt exists… But like my friend Alexandros ‘the great..’ says, “there is no benefit in doubt, my friend…”
I’m considered a ‘liberal’ by many of my ‘more conservative’ friends. I tell them I’m an anarchist, but they don’t understand (or seem to care to understand) what this really means. I try to explain to them the root of this word but I lose them along the way. It’s fine and, actually probably better this way. I don’t know what it means to be a liberal. Am I for or against the death penalty? I don’t really have an opinion. Am I for or against gay marriage? Everyone should have the right to be that stupid, yes, even gay people… Am I for or against abortion? Well, I wouldn’t ever choose to abort a child of mine but I do believe it should be my choice, and not the current government of modern society or some self proclaimed middle man placed between me and the divine, yes, I believe it should be my choice. Am I for or against ‘might makes right’ oppression and starvation? I am proud to say I am against it, including being against any person or persons who believe its alright for millions upon millions of people to starve while a growing minority of rich and powerful manipulate the masses to become more rich and powerful for no other reason than pure greed. How can this model be something people aspire to reach? How is this balance? Is this only how far we’ve come? The sad truth is that it is… Noam Chomsky has said that if the American public knew how much blood were actually on their hands, the world would be a significantly different place almost overnight. I believe that to be true, and not selling my soul to live according to today’s popular model will help me sleep just a little bit better at night, no matter if that means living as a fool who tries to be aware and change things, its worth it to me, and I do know, that I am a fool. Fuck, did I go off again into a side tangent?
I’m a very passionate person, passionate in love, passionate in my fights (to the point of rage) passionate about growth, acceptance, knowledge, wisdom, but most of all, passionate to and in the heart. Anyone and everyone I’ve ever let into my heart still holds a place there, even if they have broken my heart, by my own hand, by the ways of disappointment through my judging them on what I believed their intentions to be, their potential to be. I’m not ashamed of who I am, how I feel, or what I believe, but, it does often leave me feeling like this, writhing, isolated, alone, and desperate for change. Every time I’ve ever felt this heart break, it was watching another, that held a place in my heart, not live up to my hopes, my expectations of what I believed their higher selves to be, and then justify it through some immediate gratification, selling out their own potential of true happiness, growth, and enlightenment. But who am I to tell them what to choose? How to live? How to be happy? This is where my heart collapses, breaks, and in most cases, eventually rebuilds. I have to let go. I have to lose. You never learn the wealth in loss until you actually lose, its true. So I lose. My heart breaks. The connection breaks. And I pick up the pieces. I scurry along the ground, amongst the dirt, looking for whatever wisdom the experience has left for me, and pray I’m able to pick it up.
I have a little idea or theory you might say about life. I call it ‘faith vs fear.’ Everything in life, our individual lives, falls into one category or the other for us. The more you have on one side, the less you have on the other, ie: the more fear you have, the less faith you have. And both have the same power of manifestation in life because they both float in the realm of belief. If you fear something, you obviously believe it has weight or possibility of coming true. The same goes for faith, if you have faith in something, you obviously believe it without knowing it to be true and are unable to prove it to be true. So both lie in belief systems, and what we believe becomes real, it manifests. I choose faith over fear, across the board, from every angle of life, in every choice I seem to be presented with. Of course, I do fall short from time to time… But either way, life is not without irony, we are here to learn, no matter what we choose, outwardly, so we, in my belief, are often set up to lose, but I have, or should I say choose, faith that in the ways I lose or am proven a fool, it is what is meant for me, a gift of spirit for me to see, for me to end up exactly where I am supposed to be, smiling alongside the irony…
This morning, as we sat in the silence, the distance growing between us, I pictured her leaving, in the way loves end. I imagined it over, her giving up, on love, on us, on happiness and the work and growth it would take for her to reach that happiness, that ideal, an ideal I know as my own that she claims is hers the same, (but one never knows what another really sees inside.) I placed myself there in heart, if only for that moment to weigh the love, and the potential loss, to feel the pain it gave, to feel the fool, once again, to let go, to lose. It’s a fear I own, to put that faith into something and then eventually still end up alone. She’s the one. I believe this, wholeheartedly. But my way is balance, and to take something like this for granted, is not my way. She didn’t leave, and as I choose to believe we always will, we worked it out. But I had chosen, in that moment alone, to put myself there, in that place, as if she had left, kind of masochistically, not through some addiction to the pain it would bring, but as a way to ground myself, that what I believe is only that, what I believe… It’s faith, simply. I am still making the same mistakes I have always made. She could easily one day, walk away. And as every time before, for the same reasons, my heart would break.
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