Positive Resonance

Yesterday I lost this post completely, so this is a rewrite and I can't remember how it went. It did I'm 90% sure begin with loneliness:



That should get you in the mood. Now why is loneliness so unbarable? Why is it some days (and hopefully not most days) that we just can't face ourselves in the mirror? Why do we need the door open when as a child we first move into our own bedroom?

I remember when Claire left me, I was confronted more by my own presence and it's sudden apparantness than I was by her absence. I couldn't stand my own company. I remember amidst all the grief I just wanted a new partner (or the old one) in my life as soon as possible to try and alleviate the life sentence of being with myself.

And now I remember! I wrote about a bridge! Yeah, so for me that whole episode was my opportunity that some of us (that I would call the fortunate ones) are presented with this opportunity to cross a rickety bridge extending over a huge chasm.

On the other side it's like awesome, but it's also empty of any people. That bridge you can choose to cross is the gap between being emotionally dependant on others and being emotionally independant. Being your own wellspring or whatever.

And it's hard and its scary and its terrifying. And you just know that bridge is going to collapse behind you and there will be no turning back. But that's a good thing.

For me 90% of crossing that bridge I owe to my counsellor at the time, Joe. He stopped me from obsessing over how to get Claire back or find some new girlfriend and he gave me shit to do.

Training to be a tutor at FLN and meeting Zaman too went a long way, in making me my own source of reassurance and a wellspring of loving love stuff.

But a lesser acknowledged pivotal moment was this profound and profoundly simple exercise. It was at RYLA camp (don't ask) and me and like 200 other people or whatever were all sitting ina circle and we had to throw this tennis ball or something from one to another. The rule was whoever threw it had to say something nice about the person they threw it to and everybody got a turn.

Mine was 'X is a genuinely loving person.' which was easy.

You know its so easy to let other people know you appreciate them, sincerely and shit that you wonder why the opportunities seem so rare.

The thing was, the facilitator (once everybody had said something nice and had something nice said about them) went back around the circle, and we had to remember what we said and change X's name to 'I'm' or whatever the grammar demanded.

So I had to say 'I'm a genuinely loving person' and the facilitator, I don't remember who the guy was - looked at me and said 'Yeah.' and it was something I would otherwise have not acknowledged in myself.

See that's the truly baffling part, surely it is even easier to think well of ourselves and tell ourselves nice things than it is other people? Yet (I at least) do it less. I have little positive to say about myself, even these days.

But I remember walking through the backroads of brunswick near the upfield line and in the absence of anybody else to tell me so, I said 'well, I'm proud of you tohm.' and that was a turning point in my emotional development.

But I get ahead of myself. The reason the simple exercise works so well is that it's based on circular logic. We look for positives in others that we call our friends, to find them we have to recognise them, to recognise them we have to possess them to some extent ourselves. That's why just about anything good you have to say of other people, is most likely true of yourself. It's just so hard to acknowledge it, we percieve a lack because we experience the whole of ourselves whereas we just see one side of our peers.

In this regard attraction IS reciprocal, as far as we can percieve. And whilst saying we are attracted to ourselves in others sounds arrogant and not a little crippy, on a fundamental level it is true. Opposites don't attract, they just seem more pronounced.

So imagine your physical experience is a hotel for the soul. And every day a new soul is wandering into your life and looking out through your eyes, thinking your thoughts, listening at your earholes and taking meals through your mouthhole.

What does today's guest think about their room? Do they want to prolong their stay? Do they find you interesting, do they want to hang about and see how it all turns out?

In short: who would you really rather be? Even if you feel alone, aren't you curious as to how its going to turn out?

And this is cliche, but seriously if you can't love yourself, how can you really sustain loving somebody else. If love is a machine, it isn't going to last if one or both of the components are faulty. You gotta cross that bridge, I'm torturing metaphores...

Anyway, you have to wait for the last question, but to me it is all summed up by Chris Farley's interview with Paul McCartney. Stop being down on yourself, and make some love.