There's this girl that I work with (and who's blog I secretly read) that's bothering the hell out of me. Basically, she is always going on about this guy she's been dating for about a months now...maybe five or six weeks. Anyway, she's always talking about how she needs to spend all of this time with him, that she "wants" to spend all this time with him, at the same time complaining that there's no time in her life anymore for anything else. She gets up in the morning (usually late for work) then leaves afterward to spend time with him...any spare time that they mutually have off is spent together. She talks about how "silly" it is, how she needs to stop, how she doesn't know why she always does it. "I just don't want to not be with him" she says in a million different ways...
...and all I want to do is tell her what's up. Because I know. I always know. For 26 years I have sat at the sidelines and watched people, studied them, listened to them, and in those 26 years I have come to know people better than almost anyone else I know. Almost as pertinent as that, I have studied people, through philosophy and religion and come to understand as much as I could possibly expect myself to be able to how we as human beings think, feel, and love. I have studied epistemology and existentialism. I have read the great works on love. I have come to grips with the deep meanings of the great religions and what they teach their followers. I know what goes on in peoples' minds.
I'm not psychic or anything, it's just that we people are pretty damn predictable. We all fall into stereotypes whether we want to admit it or not. To some thinkers, there are four personality types, for other six, eight, or up to sixteen. I have never seen anyone suggest that there are more "types" than that. Granted, we have all lead individual lives that have lead us down individual roads and those individual roads will lead us all to individual places...but the number of decisions that we make, the turns if you will, are extremely finite. There are an infinite number of decisions that we can make from the moment that we step off the curb to cross the street to the type of toast we order for breakfast, to the television show we watch to unwind, to what we do with our free time -- over the course of our lifetimes we must make a billion and a half such decisions. But each one, each and every decision is one made between a few -- one or two, ten or twelve -- choices...and it is at that level that we become predictable. I don't need to know someone very well to be able to guess what they'll choose whenever the opportunity arises. It's a skill gained through lonely people-watching.
That said, I know exactly why this girl is in the position that she is in. And I don't know if I should tell her -- because I don't think I have the right. In the past, perhaps I would have. If I gave a damn about her maybe I would then as well...but I don't. So there.
But it troubles me because so many people suffer the same way. It is fear that drives her, fear that she'll lose her boyfriend if she doesn't throw herself so completely at him. Fear that he will give up if she doesn't give him all the attention that she can, fear that he will see any desire on her part to be away from him as a desire on her part to be not with him. Fear that she will lose him if she doesn't hold on for dear life. She is afraid to let go and trust that everything will be alright.
It's been often said that if you love someone, you will let them leave. If it is truly love, they will not leave once given the opportunity. This is a lesson lost on her. Trust is lost on her. Love, after all, is all about trust. Love is empty without trust. She does not have trust -- and without it, she cannot love...
Ask her and she will say that she's in love, but she is not. She may feel it, she may feel it deeply, but it is not love that she feels. Not true love anyway. For she does not trust. What she feels is the warm glow of a a new toy, the proud ownership of something shiny and new, the happiness of feeling wanted. That is not love. That is something else, something internal. Love, after all, is external.
But I can not tell her that for it would break her heart...and I would feel guilty for doing so. That, and I really don't care.
Of course, I find myself in the same position, but not...maybe in that exactly opposite way that leads to the same conclusion -- maybe in the same way that leads to the opposite conclusion. I do not know. But it is freaking me out.
...and all I want to do is tell her what's up. Because I know. I always know. For 26 years I have sat at the sidelines and watched people, studied them, listened to them, and in those 26 years I have come to know people better than almost anyone else I know. Almost as pertinent as that, I have studied people, through philosophy and religion and come to understand as much as I could possibly expect myself to be able to how we as human beings think, feel, and love. I have studied epistemology and existentialism. I have read the great works on love. I have come to grips with the deep meanings of the great religions and what they teach their followers. I know what goes on in peoples' minds.
I'm not psychic or anything, it's just that we people are pretty damn predictable. We all fall into stereotypes whether we want to admit it or not. To some thinkers, there are four personality types, for other six, eight, or up to sixteen. I have never seen anyone suggest that there are more "types" than that. Granted, we have all lead individual lives that have lead us down individual roads and those individual roads will lead us all to individual places...but the number of decisions that we make, the turns if you will, are extremely finite. There are an infinite number of decisions that we can make from the moment that we step off the curb to cross the street to the type of toast we order for breakfast, to the television show we watch to unwind, to what we do with our free time -- over the course of our lifetimes we must make a billion and a half such decisions. But each one, each and every decision is one made between a few -- one or two, ten or twelve -- choices...and it is at that level that we become predictable. I don't need to know someone very well to be able to guess what they'll choose whenever the opportunity arises. It's a skill gained through lonely people-watching.
That said, I know exactly why this girl is in the position that she is in. And I don't know if I should tell her -- because I don't think I have the right. In the past, perhaps I would have. If I gave a damn about her maybe I would then as well...but I don't. So there.
But it troubles me because so many people suffer the same way. It is fear that drives her, fear that she'll lose her boyfriend if she doesn't throw herself so completely at him. Fear that he will give up if she doesn't give him all the attention that she can, fear that he will see any desire on her part to be away from him as a desire on her part to be not with him. Fear that she will lose him if she doesn't hold on for dear life. She is afraid to let go and trust that everything will be alright.
It's been often said that if you love someone, you will let them leave. If it is truly love, they will not leave once given the opportunity. This is a lesson lost on her. Trust is lost on her. Love, after all, is all about trust. Love is empty without trust. She does not have trust -- and without it, she cannot love...
Ask her and she will say that she's in love, but she is not. She may feel it, she may feel it deeply, but it is not love that she feels. Not true love anyway. For she does not trust. What she feels is the warm glow of a a new toy, the proud ownership of something shiny and new, the happiness of feeling wanted. That is not love. That is something else, something internal. Love, after all, is external.
But I can not tell her that for it would break her heart...and I would feel guilty for doing so. That, and I really don't care.
Of course, I find myself in the same position, but not...maybe in that exactly opposite way that leads to the same conclusion -- maybe in the same way that leads to the opposite conclusion. I do not know. But it is freaking me out.
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