Wow, it's been a long time since my last update hasn't it?
My life has been a roller coaster. I'm in the middle of a 4 month program called "Conducting Openness". The bottom line is that openness begets openness. By being open, we encourage people around us to be open.
However, we don't see others clearly. We see them through a haze of our judgements and unspoken affairs. It's like a pane of glass between two people. If the pane of glass is clear and clean, both people see each other clearly. However, if I have something I have unsaid to someone that is eating at me on the inside, then it is like there is a smudge on the glass. As more and more shit piles up, the glass becomes murkier and murkier, and eventually, I am no longer relating to the other person, and I am in fact just relating to all the piled up crap I hold inside.
I've been working on burning through all the crap that has piled up on the glass that surrounds my life in an effort to be more clean in my relating with others. I'm somewhat succeeding, although I have a looooong way to go.
Just recently, I told my parents that I feel ashamed that I cannot adequately take care of them when they need me the most. I told them that I knew they were not judging me because of my inability. Rather, I was judging myself based on what I deemed to be "right".
This notion of something being "right" or "wrong" is a pain in the butt. If there's a "right", then there's obviously a "wrong". And if I'm not "right", then obviously, I am "wrong". It becomes a pain in the ass because I arbitrarily label stuff as being right or wrong based on nothing more than my own judgements. For example, I was with a girl on a date. I gave her a tour of the house, then led her into my bedroom. She was sitting on my bed and smiling up at me. I kissed her. Then I pulled away and said something like "It wouldn't be right to lead you in here and seduce you. That's just tacky". She gave me a quizzical look, like what the hell are you talking about. Reflecting back, she was a consenting adult, and the only thing "wrong" about the moment was me not being to live fully in the moment, and instead labelling it based on some weird arbitrary standard of being.
Alwyn wrote a really cool piece on his blog.
http://alwynlau.blogdrive.com/archive/443.htmlThe piece itself isn't spectacular. What I find interesting is his comment in response to my two comments. Read it. It's worth the read. Honestly.
I've also started seeing a lovely girl. She's from Israel and is here on a work permit for a few months. She moves me in how she lives so fully in the moment. We were talking about her life in Israel, and she told me about how her house was all bombed out and she had to leave the country because her parents were afraid for her life. I was feeling sad for her losing her house, but she just said, "I'm alive. My parents are alive. Why should I be sad?"
This brings to mind another time... We walked out to buy cigs for her. Halfway down the block, she just turned to look at the sunrise and exclaimed, "Look! That's so beautiful! Quick, kiss me now!". And we held hands there on the road, two barely awake zombies watching the sunrise. I haven't seen a sunrise in who knows how many years...
She's heading back to Israel in late Jan or early Feb 2008. I know this relationship won't go anywhere. But I'm not too worried about what will happen in the next few months. I'm just living in the present.
I got home today around 11.30pm. When I walked up to my apartment, there was a little package sitting at my doorstep. Hmm... I know it's my birthday, but I wonder who sent it. It wasn't wrapped, so I knew it wasn't a fedex or UPS deliver. I walked up and looked at the little calling card attached to the package. Turns out that Anat had hand delivered a bouquet of orchids to my apartment while I was out today. There was a little handwritten note.
