Emotional playout...are we having fun yet?

What is emotional playout?  This is a not so rare condition that allows couples, partners, friends, and family members to “share” their stressors with you.  Close personal relationships create emotional bonds between and among people allowing the screen of pretension to come down and therefore allowing the furnace of emotion to open with no filters, sometimes full blast.

When we agree to have real relationships with people as compared to superficial ones, we open up a bond that brings down the walls of the protection that we normally reserve for most people in our lives. We open the gates freely and allow all of their Trojan horses to enter without compunction.  We accept the baggage, even welcome to the chance sometime to alleviate their stressors by absorbing them in the name of sharing.

Life’s most potent stressors (the ones that cause life limitation like marriage, divorce, moving, death in the family) are embraced for the sake of our human relations. This is one of the strengths of our humanity; the true sharing of responsibilities; the good, the bad, and the ugly.

What we have to learn to do though is not to adopt the stressors and make them our own.  We need to release ourselves of owning the responsibilities but act more as a sounding board that reflects the stressor and one that doesn’t adopt it instead.   Because if we own the adopted stressor, who will we give it to in return?  And, this I perceive, is the cause of many a repeated argument between and among our personals.  You gave me this stressor and now that I am stressed, I return the favor and the original stressor gets piggybacked on the new one and so on.  These stressors also have a way of popping up at regular intervals as a reminder of the previous stressor and then, folks, we have simply an argument and we have lost the ability to act as a support mechanism…

Relationships require seesawing so that when I am up, I can allow you to bring me back to even with your stressor and vice versa.  When I am down, don’t keep me there by piling more weight on top or else I cannot be there as the shock absorber you truly need.  We all want great relationships with our friends, family and significant others; this can only happen with some fair play, don’t you agree?

I forgive you...

I forgive you; these are difficult words for many people.  What does it take to forgive someone?  Most of us just gloss over the issue and pretend that everything is all right even though we don’t utter these words. That’s okay since our forgiveness is in our actions rather than our words…but what of those individuals who cannot or will not forgive?

I have lived long enough to know that forgiveness is more about the person who was hurt rather than the act itself but the pain caused by a hurt lingers and remains as long as forgiveness is not allowed.  Our resistance to forgiveness hurts us more than the transgressor always.  It impairs our personal vision and colors our daily lives; it takes energy to resist forgiveness since that is the normal state of peace in our personal humanity; it acts as a burr in our thoughts; often demanding more energy from our souls.

I have learned to forgive and it has taken some strength to do so.  Having had a few controlling experiences that consumed me in my life; I have had to let go of these issues and move on.  This is a skill worth developing.

Before I was able to forgive, I tried to block the person and situation from my thoughts…impossible.  I was consumed by anger and distress and as those who know my life story might agree, I had the right to be angry.  But what did it do to me?

When you watch “The Wizard of Oz” you are told that bad or angry witches are ugly and good witches are beautiful (although Glenda didn’t really rate as beautiful in my opinion she just had a nicer outfit.)  But there is some truth to this reasoning…anger makes you ugly inside if not outside as well; it scorches your feelings and dulls the mind.  So if this is true, why can’t we just forgive?

Forgiveness is not about saying what the transgressor did was okay, it’s about lessening the power this hurt has over you. So I have allowed myself to forgive me for holding onto the negative power so long…

I guess forgiveness begins with me.

Love is a mystery to me...

Love is a mystery to me; do we love to be loved back? Do we love so that breathing is easier? Is loving a natural event for everyone or only those special selective few we see in the movies?

Loving seems obvious when you witness it but is it?  Do we really understand why people cling together in emotional attachment?  And more importantly, do we really know what love feels like when we do have it? Is it too ethereal for us to feel and touch like the brush of a light wind across your cheek?

It’s difficult to love someone with all of his or her “personality” and uniqueness (and we all have our own specialness that may make us more difficult to love.) We can clearly become infatuated with someone for a variety of reasons but when that infatuation fades, what is left?  Is that love or do we merely cling together because we need to be needed?

I believe that love and need are inseparable and, in fact, may drive many a relationship together or apart; some of your needs have to match, even if nothing else does. 

A bad relationship is like a bad hairdo; it may look fine on someone else; it may only look good when someone else does it for you but when left to your own devices, you just cannot make it look the same and so you are left with a broken smile that’s hard to fix.

Relationships and love are a lot of work.  There are no easy, natural relationships.  Human beings are difficult, self centered, and damaged from years of wear and tear.  They have secret desires they never tell anyone but themselves for fear of being too vulnerable; too exposed; too open.

I know that I want an honest relationship; one that is exposed, vulnerable and dangerous, yes dangerous because once you open that secret door to yourself, it can never be closed.

I have learned something very important, that loving yourself is the key to a successful relationship.  It is the primary reason most people cannot thrive in a relationship.  Did anyone ever teach you how to love yourself first? I wasn’t taught this and it has taken me a lifetime to discover.

If you don’t give yourself the real opportunity to love yourself as you are then you are missing the most important opportunity for love in your life; accept yourself, express joy in who you are (stop worrying about who or what you aren’t); at least take off your mask and expose yourself to you and realize that you’re not so bad; that you deserve to be loved; that you are not an imposition on life and others.  Everyone will not love you, in fact few people really do but let those that try to love you see the real you, warts and all and just maybe you’ll find love in cinemascope.