Understanding

It is weird the way you don't really see what you look like
You ever see yourself reversed, through the looking glass, as it were

Yesterday, I was doing what I do everyday - teaching and looking after the boys, which includes cooking and cleaning, etc... and then I thought about how I loved them - I mean the way in which I loved them. I didn't get any fulfillment from them loving me back - but fulfillment from the loving of them. Which is very different from the way I have loved my partners. From them, I sort of had a parent child relationship - I sort of looked for them the love which I expected from my parents. So the love had to come from them and if it didn't, then I would read it that they no longer loved me. Is that unreasonable?

So I thought, I love Zen, the cat and the boys, not because they show affection for me, but because they deserve that kind of love. And from our partners we don't in general expect this kind of love. We expect the giving and receiving of love to work both ways. But what if the people I have picked in this life can't do that? They can't do that because of their life stories. Because they were men. Because they were from a particular background.

And I was watching Noel Gallagher's interview on Graham Norton. He was an utter bastard. But underneath that tough working class, I Piss On Your Stereo veneer, I could see that it was both just an act but also not an act. He behaved in that way because, presumably, he didn't know how to behave any other way. But also, you could see that there was this part of him which was deeply uncomfortable with the person he was and with the people he was with. If he could behave differently - would he? Probably not. But also - yes, yes he would.

This made me think.

I do not have to change. I must never change I am who I am. And then I was given a choice. My choice is that I have to just become more courageous. And unconditional. The way a mother loves unconditionally. That is the path which is now there for me. For some reason I chose this path. When my stars were assembling my fate, this is the fate I chose. And sometimes I become overwhelmed and exhausted, as any parent would and does, but to then look for solace from the thing which overwhelms and exhausts you is like looking for solace from a tidal wave in a raging storm. It is simply not going to happen.

I have to go deeper, much deeper into myself. To stop thrashing around like a teenager. Stop being a child really. I have to transform, not to become a doormat, an all encompassing heart. I am being asked to do this. It is not the path for everyone, not the path of the martyr nor the saint, but my own path. If there is a huge stone blocking your path, then embrace the stone.

The stone will never understand the water, never. It will never understand the air nor the sunlight. And it is ridiculous, illogical to expect it to. But the water cannot be the stone. Nor is it a good idea that it does.

I need to sit with this more.