In The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow writes, “…the unity of humanity should maybe be not one but two.”
Kerouac writes in On The Road, “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk—real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
Finally, Rob Bell writes, “We get incredible mileage out of this tired old English word ‘love’ don’t we? I mean, we’ll tell someone we love them and then in the same breath we’ll talk about how much we love a new car or a certain pair of pants. I mean, I love my wife and, I also love tacos?”
Every now and again I find myself sitting down and contemplating the past, present and, in some cases, the future. And often I begin to notice particular patterns throughout my time line.
My love of music, for example, is apparent from the time I was a kid making mixed tapes on my radio pretending to be a DJ and introducing the latest music. I would say silly things like, “coming up next The Police with Message in a Bottle.” I can’t count how many times I listened to that song. Those truly were some of the happiest days of my life.
Also, other patterns become apparent. My love of solitude. Or my distaste for liars and fakes. The fact that I always let my imagination go in weird places, getting my hopes up, only to be disappointed in the end. My willingness to make others happy.
These patterns all come together to shape what is called personality. Personality is a combination of these past patterns, present trends and expectations of the future. And boy, do I have a lot of personality.
But, more importantly, the one pattern I’ve recently discovered is my terrible luck with relationships. Not just any relationships mind you. My terrible luck with close knit relationships and, particularly, relationships with the opposite sex.
These problems can all stem from some Freudian fruit cake fucked up analysis of my prior relationships and how my sexual frustrations manifest themselves in bizarre and wild ways but, I’m taking a different approach. Rather than living in the past I’m looking forward to the future. I’m looking forward to bettering myself and those around me. I’m looking forward to being able to catch myself before I fall back into those same patterns.
From this day forth I declare my sobriety. I’m kicking the habit. I’m confronting those demons. Tomorrow will be my first day off of love.
Wish me luck.
Thank You
1 comment:
we can only go head first into dark,
fight face to face with the beast,
until we finally win.
thinking about the past will make you apprehensive.
every person/situation is different.
you just need to make sure you're choosing company with real people.
this, at least to me, might work. It is what I've been attempting.
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