5 posts tagged “quotes”

Falling out of love is very enlightening. For a short while you see the world with new eyes.
-    Iris Murdoch

yes, I know.  The post title is lyrics from a Fiona Apple song (Sarah, come to FL one day and I'll give you your prize.)  And the quote is from Iris Murdoch, whom I adore.  But they express the same things. 

I've been thinking recently (and working out in therapy) about those we let into our lives, those we take walls down for, open up to, become emotionally intimate with; those with whom we fall in love, those whom we love. 
Now, falling in love is exhilarating, wonderful, terrifying, exciting, fantastic, amazing.  But it's also transitory and fleeting.  Falling in love lasts an hour, a night, a week.  But it doesn't last a lifetime.  I constantly fall out of love, and fall back in - whether it's with a single person, or someone else, it's the same feeling.  But it doesn't require a lowering of walls or letting someone deeply in.  Falling in love is physical, chemical. 

The letting down of walls that leads to the intimacy of friendship, of love, is something that I'm continually working on in my life.  I don't think walls are unhealthy as long as you're aware of them and know how they affect your relationships with people, and know when to lower them.  Letting people in, loving someone, isn't chemical, it's not physical, it's all about trust.  And that takes time to develop.

When I fall out of love - the chemical kind - it stings but I do see things differently.  I look at others warily, but my trust isn't compromised.  Walls weren't really lowered; I let someone in, but not completely. I know it will happen again and it'll be all those things above. (It doesn't matter either way in the end/Because you'll fall in love again/And there were others before me. - She Wants Revenge, "Walking Away")

When we stop loving someone, someone we let in, someone whom we let see The Stranger (guess I'm in a musical mood) and survived we do see the world differently.  When that happens, whether because that someone hurts us or we just stop loving (it does happen, people change), for a it colors our vision, makes things appear other than what they were. 

How does this actually relate to my life?  Well, I stopped loving my husband.  When I recognized that (though it had happened long before I recognized it), I viewed the world through almost paralyzing sadness.  When I fall out of love, it's a bit of sadness that colors my eyes, but also a sense a hope because I know that I will fall in love again. 

Anyway, I'm loving my life, whether I'm in love or falling out, no matter how I'm looking at the world, it's through eyes that I control.  And I'm working on the walls. 

Life's but a walking oral.

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

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and

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow fuck
Like a Colossus!

Which work of Shakespeare was the original quote from?

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The more I’m afraid of something, the more I know I have to do it.  I figured that out when I was a kid.  I can lead a protected life – hiding away from the scary world.  Or I can take on the things that scare me the most.  The more it might hurt, the more I might die doing it, the more worth doing it must be. – Marlee Maitlin, The L Word, “Luck Be A Lady”

I'm catching up on season 4 of The L Word.  I'm always a season behind because it's cheaper to buy the discs than subscribe to Showtime.  And, really, the only show I want to own is this one.  The others (Weeds, Dexter, Californication, etc.) I'm perfectly content to get through Nexflix.  But that's not what I want to talk about, nor does it have anything to do with the quote above except I'm watching that episode now.

I spent most of my life afraid.  Afraid of what would happen if I applied myself to something, afraid if I didn't.  Afraid people wouldn't like me if I was me, afraid of being alone.  I became whatever people wanted me to be.  I went to school and wrote papers because it came easily to me and I didn't have to apply myself to do well.  I became a teacher because it was easy.  I worked in libraries and became a librarian because I was good at it and didn't involve risk.  I got married because it was the logical, easy step that was expected of me.  I stayed with him because it was safer than leaving him.  I never took personal risk.

Until last year when I realized that not taking risk had made me miserable and I was tired of it.  Until I realized that taking personal risk was really the only way to enjoy life.  And, really, the reason for it.  So I left my husband whom I didn't really love but felt safe with (2 very different things), started to live as me - fell in love, fell out of love (and continue to do so fairly regularly), been hurt and hit bottom within myself.  I hurt those I shouldn't have, and almost destroyed something I hold precious. 

I have pushed myself to take professional risk and been denied several times.  Do I still have a safe job that doesn't challenge me?  Yes.  But I've also pushed myself outside of just my organization & have presentations and proposals in the works for things not quite what I do.  So it's not safe anymore.

Am I afraid?  Sometimes.  Am I afraid to lose people or that they will hurt me?  Occasionally.  Am I afraid that I might lose a job or screw up my career?  Now and then. But the above quote really speaks to me.  If I could die doing it (or feel like I want to die should it go badly) then it's worth doing, worth keeping, worth trying.  I didn't figure it out when I was a kid; it took me 36, almost 37 years to do so.  It took me that long to come to terms with and accept that safety doesn't mean happiness or contentment but that no one is always happy and if I'm content then I'm not truly living.

Thanks Ilene Chaiken and the writers of that episode for that quote.  Thanks the good friends I've developed this year who have accepted that I'm not going to be perfect and I'm going to fuck up when I take risks, but that I'll learn from it.  Thanks my family (well, most of them) and long time friends who might as well be family who want me to be me, accept me as me, knowing that I'm going to take risks and fuck up.  And thanks me, for getting to the point where I like me and am willing to accept that risk and fear shouldn't keep me from things I want.  And that the things I want are often that of which I am most afraid.

“We don't see things as they are. We see things as we are.” -anais nin

I adore anais.  I've reread her diaries about 10 times.  There are so many things she's written that speak to me, or have spoken to me in various times of my life.  This is one I keep coming back to.  It's so very true, and one that shapes a lot of who I am and how I live. 
We view the world through our own biases.  We see people, things, experiences, as we want to - as we're able to - because of who and what we are.  So when I judge people (and we all judge people to a certain extent) I try to remember that they aren't actually who I think they are and first impressions often need to be questioned. 

That said, I do go by my gut a lot because if I react strongly to something, positively or negatively, there's usually a reason. 

I am a card-carrying member of the ACLU. But the more important question is why aren't you, Bob? Now, this is an organization whose sole purpose is to defend the Bill of Rights, so it naturally begs the question: Why would a senator, his party's most powerful spokesman and a candidate for President, choose to reject upholding the Constitution? If you can answer that question, folks, then you're smarter than I am, because I didn't understand it until a couple of minutes ago. America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad, 'cause it's gonna put up a fight. It's gonna say "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free". I've known Bob Rumson for years, and I've been operating under the assumption that the reason Bob devotes so much time and energy to shouting at the rain was that he simply didn't get it. Well, I was wrong. Bob's problem isn't that he doesn't get it. Bob's problem is that he can't sell it. Nobody has ever won an election by talking about what I was just talking about. This is a country made up of people with hard jobs that they're terrified of losing. The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment. We are a nation afraid to go out at night. We're a society that has assigned low priority to education and has looked the other way while our public schools have been decimated. We have serious problems to solve, and we need serious men to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, friend, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections. You gather a group of middle-aged, middle-class, middle-income voters who remember with longing an easier time, and you talk to them about family and American values and personal character. And you hold up an old photo of the President's girlfriend. You scream about patriotism and you tell them she's to blame for their lot in life, and you go on television and you call her a whore. Sydney Ellen Wade has done nothing to you, Bob. She has done nothing but put herself through law school, prosecute criminals for five years, represent the interests of public school teachers for two years, and lobby for the safety of our natural resources. You want a character debate, Bob? You better stick with me, 'cause Sydney Ellen Wade is way out of your league.

- "The American President"