The World in Peril...

Well, perhaps just my version of “the world.”  

I am not sure I like where we are headed.  This isn’t a secret or a new thought.  I do not want to go backwards either...but I also have to own that the present day circumstances played out over time can bring on a full on panic attack if I were prone to such things (I am not, thankfully).

What, exactly is in peril?

Relationships.

Our ability to relate in a meaningful way to the people about us.  Our ability to engage with others.  Our ability to love and be loved.  The current time is killing our relationships one emoji and text at a time.  I swear to God it is!

Also, a lack of punctuation (I am guilty too) is further deepening the divide as much that is communicated is miscommunicated...

I think relationships are the most important thing in my life.  Not how much money I have, the clothes I wear and buy without an appropriate level of restraint, what I drive, or where I live.  All of those things fail when compared to the people who rank as valued and important in my life.

I am not sure why I value this so much.  I just know that I do.  And even with this honest admission, I will also, quite to the contrary own, that I am not that great at relationships.  There are many reasons, please refer to any blog I have written previously for a comprehensive list of reasons why I feel so “fish out of water” where relationships are concerned.  And if you don’t feel like reading my 1861 blog posts (I don’t blame you one bit!) then the short version as to why I struggle so with relationships is fear.  More on that in a minute...

I think relationships rank as top priority because I feel like I have felt alone for most of my life.  An only child growing up around large and robust families left me feeling a deficiency, inadequacy and loneliness that I couldn’t even own until a few years ago.  To be clear, I have felt adrift in a sea of intimacy for most of my life, clinging to the life raft of my own self sufficiency.  It has only been in more recent years where I have come to see what I want most is in the work I have been avoiding...again, still.

Growing up fairly transient, relationships were replaceable.  Have a best friend?  Well, now you are moving and you will get another one.  And I did, repeatedly.  So what I learned was that what mattered most was having a relationship, glossing over the whole depth and weight idea for decades.

Age has a way of cutting through the bullshit indulgences of youth.  Allowing one to hone in on the true importance of people and their relationship to you.  And it would be right here that I would jump up and down with fervored regret over how irresponsibly I have behaved in relation to my relationships.  Too self absorbed, too full of my own ideas and self importance.  Only more recently becoming crystalline clear that the people who are IN my life are the reason I enjoy my life so much.

I have done a great deal of relationship pruning in the last three years.  Hopefully now, in a place where the garden of my relationships is in full flower, I feel present and available for the people who remain, well, at least most of the time.  My predilections for self consumption and selfishness always a cause for trouble in relating and maintaining ongoing connection...

So I guess all of that was just to underscore that (I am not indicting anyone in particular), we are all guilty of allowing the modern world to invade and take over our connectivity and intimacies.

And I must own that I feel a certain level of despondency in this new mad realm.  I engage in the platforms that dumb down and eke out the last remaining strains of intimacy, vulnerability and love.  I too feel overwhelmed and exhausted by the things one must do today to even meet a new friend or date or love.  It is a lot.  And I honestly hate who I become when I dive into the online dating pool.  (I know, I know I have pledge to give it up for good, many, many times!  But when I spend months alone with no prospects I succumb.  Someone I met recently said it best, “it isn’t that I ever want to online date, it is really that my I become just a little more willing to do it than I was before.”). And that is apparently enough to point the needle in a direction that was not possible before...

So in walks fear...

It is always the same fear, wearing costumes of different designs and colors, that only fool a fool, and that fear is that I will not get something I desperately want or I will lose something I already believe I have...

And when this fear invades relationships, which is often and with an intensity that only social media can provide, it is the harbinger of death, loathing and loneliness.

So I believe our relational worlds are in peril.  They are eroding at an alarming rate.  The level of destruction is happening faster than construction. Look around!  How many truly happy couples do you know?  How many people appear to be in relationships that are vital, life fulfilling and supporting?

I was on vacation in Bali recently (I know, what the fuck am I even complaining about starting off a paragraph with that bullshit?) and it was a very coupley place to go.  Everyone, and I do mean EVERYONE, there was a couple, out to celebrate a wedding or anniversary.  (I know, I know the next question you are going to pose right after you get over my bullshit about seeming to complain about a vacation to Bali for Pete’s sake!  That question is why the fuck would I, long standing single woman on a mission, ever go to a place like that on vacation, on purpose?  Self loathing?  Low self esteem that sought to go lower?  Ignorance?)

Actually none of those apply (well at least not from my perspective, I will allow you your own assessment!). I knew where I was going and what it was going to be like before I got there.  But I wanted a very particular environs and that was apparently only located in places frequented by couples in love.  

What I say next might shock you...it did me for a moment.

I didn’t see any coupley people who appeared to be in love.   I saw them bored, frustrated, on their phones, apathetic, tired and lost.  I did NOT see anyone who had an enviable relationship (except maybe my driver who appeared to very much love his wife and family).

The biggest low of the whole Bali experience was one night, fine dining at my beautiful hotel.  Sitting, overlooking a Balinese pool, that was fragrant and full of statutes of light and peace, I couldn’t help notice this one couple.  I had seen them on the grounds before, walking either ahead of each other or behind.  Never touching.  Just barely acknowledging each other’s existence really.  Well, there they sat at dinner...sitting at a beautiful table for two, shopping bags surrounding, littering the floor and putting other guests and the Balinese dancers in peril, gazing, thoughtfully and lovingly at their...wait for it...PHONES!

I gave them the benefit of the doubt...

“Surely, they will put them down momentarily, they are probably checking in with someone back home...”  I mused.

Ten minutes later...

“Ok, they are probably planning tomorrow’s outings or something like that...”

Thirty minutes later...

“What the actual fuck?  Why the fuck would you come to this amazing place with someone you purport to love and then completely ignore their presence?!”

One hour and ten minutes later...

I can’t help myself, so I maneuver my position so that I can see what the man is looking at on his phone...want to take a guess?

If you said “sports” you would be today’s lucky winner if I was giving out cash and prizes...but alas, dear reader, I only have words to offer. 

Yep, he had been watching sports the entire time.  I shudder to think what she was watching.

So there they were, fine dining in BALI of all places.  At a location that screamed for lots of sex and romance and love and cuddles and long mornings stretched in bed, limbs tossed carelessly about, draped over your lover.  (This is what I thought about as I climbed in and out of my mosquito netted bed each evening.  What I wouldn’t give to have someone to share that place with!). But there they were, completely zoned out on their screens, doing a fairly bang up job of pretending what was going on inside their phone was the most important thing in the universe to them while just a mere two feet away, sat the person they pledged before God and all loved ones they would cherish until the ends of their days.

I have to admit I put down my book.  Did my best to be fully present and to honor my solo status there.  I might have been alone, but I was there, living my life, not partnered with someone who I was communicating with on a very real level that their presence in my life was not only not valued but not really all that interesting.

I heard recently that we are all afraid of death.  But then I reframed that for myself.  I am not necessarily afraid of death.  Every day I push into my past is a day closer I move towards it, in fact.  Every day I survive most assuredly places closer to the ultimate peril.  What I realized was that I am not so afraid of death.  I mean, it is the end.  I am done.  Nothing left to do or say, or spend or save or think or feel.  It is just over.  What I feel more afraid of is not living.  Not loving.  Not relegating the time left to ensure the people about me, regardless of proximity, feel how much they mean to me.

So the world in peril is not because we are all afraid to die.  No.  It is because we are all checking out to living.  So much easier to engage with the two dimensional world rather than to risk our hearts, minds and sanity in the third dimension.

That couple made me very grateful to be alone.  I mean, fuck, I would rather BE ALONE than to feel that way when seated across from someone I am choosing to not be alone with.

And I have to say that that couple has become emblematic of everything I am afraid to become in my relationships.  A vacant parent, partner, lover, friend.  Someone who is there but not.  Someone who cares but how much is left up for debate and grabs.  To hold back and not say the thing.  To not release the love I feel out of fear that it will not be reciprocated, appreciated or valued.  Fuck it!  That is where I have landed as of late...I would rather be here and love the fuck out of myself and my life and the people who have the temerity to show up in my world, than to do anything else.

I cannot stop the technology wave that is altering our social fabric.  I can only change the way I engage with it so that I do my best to show others just how much I love them and that I am here, doing my best, failing completely far too often.  And if I am ever lucky enough to find myself on a tropical island with a man I have cared enough for to make the trip with, I pray that I can be there with him and for him while he endeavors to do the same for me.

Time is the only variable we cannot manipulate and corrupt.  So, like water, it becomes the most important element in my relational sea.  I cannot survive without water, anymore than I can survive without love and connection.  Any of my previous beliefs to the contrary are complete poppycock!  The most precious thing I can bring to any relationship in my life, is the gift of my time and attention.

Again...still.

Always.