Love

Well I finally understand love, after my recent breakup I've had some time to reflect on what love is and how it is commonly misunderstood and perhaps, the reason for the high diverce rate in western society.

It seems there are three distinct kinds of love.

Family love, father son, brother sister etc, this is an automatic kind of love, strong in itself, requiring only a little effort to keep it alive. Indeed it can survive long periods of little contact between participants. I am not so interested in discussing this type of love.

LOVE! Then there is the intense overwhelming feeling you get when you meet someone new, exciting, vibrant, it seems they are perfect and they see you as perfect. This type of love is frequently what people mistake for real love. Relationships built purely upon this kind of love are destined to fail, this infatuation always wears off, it make take 1 week, 1 month or 1 year, but eventually it will be gone. I don't get this type of love very often, or if I do, it only lasts a few days so I am unlikely to be swept away by it. I have a female friend who still believes this type of love is the real thing, she doesn't persue relationships with guys when she doesn't get this kind of love, and guess what? She's still single! She hasn't yet realised that this isn't real love, she also hasn't realised that she is one of the people that don't experience this emotion strongly. I used to feel this was true love, that was until my most recent relationship.

True Love. This is the real stuff, it takes effort,continuous effort to grow and maintain it, from both sides. It also takes commitment and to accept each other and each persons flaws. I finally understand this kind of love. In order to get this love, and to feel it, you need to give this love. It is not a linear relationship, if you give 1 unit of love you don't feel (receive) 1 unit of love. If you give 1 unit, you receive 2, if you give 2 you receive 4 it is an amazing quirk of this form of love. It is by no means automatic love, if you stop giving, you will stop feeling(receiving) and the relationship will eventually break down. The small effort of giving however, is worth it. The love you receive in return will warm your heart and allow your relationship to survive through the most difficult of external circumstances..

So many marriages fail, because they are based on the infatuation type of love, I think the reason why more arranged marriages succeed is because they skip the infatuation love and go straight to developing the true love.

After this relationship I feel like I have experienced love, if someone ever asks me 'have you ever been in love', I can truly say 'yes'.

Break up!

Well I finally broke up with my girlfriend of almost 2 years, or rather, she broke up with me. I knew it was coming to be honest, my rational mind knew, but the heart can take over and suppress the rational mind. One of the things I thought of doing was to write up an unbiased pro and cons list because, as time goes by, we tend to forget the negatives and remember only the positives. It is one of the great things about time, the universal medicine for the mind, it allows us to get over traumatic periods in our lives, but by forgetting the negatives we are prone to repeat (on in this case relapse into) our mistakes. I'm still hoping for some kind of miracle but of course it is not going to happen so for posterity all is to be recorded here..

Pros about her
She was loving
Calm
Enjoyed doing new things
Was  into fitness and looking after her health
Flexible (about disagreements)
Loved beer and having a drink occasionally
Was incredibly wise and mature for her age
Rational
Loved music

Cons about her
She didn't love me as much as I loved her. I realise I formed this opinion due to the following 3 points:
  - Prioritised work and family and friends above me consistently
  - Was not willing to quit her job to begin our life together (long distance relationship)
  - Not able to commit to me or the relationship 

Didn't talk much(or perhaps didn't want to talk, in which case this should be part of the previous point. (not good at making conversation)
Was not a good communicator (different to not talking, was not able to communicate problems, issues etc)


I wish I could have found out what her pro and con list about me was, at least that way I might be able to learn from my mistakes and do better next time.. instead she gave me the "It's not you, it's me" routine, but of course, we all know "it's ALWAYS you"! All is not lost though, I did learn a lot about love from this relationship, and I will do a post about this sometime soon..

Stress!

Well stress is an interesting and quirky feeling, I rarely experience stress, in fact I actively spend a lot of time avoiding it. For the past couple of weeks for reasons I'd rather not go into right now (perhaps in another post) I've been quite stressed. Stress has an interesting reaction on me, I'm not sure if this is common to everyone experiencing stress.  I can feel my arms physically shaking much of the time, and feel my heart beating faster than usual. My mind is unable to focus at work, leaving me feeling spaced out as if I've been smoking some exotic drug. I'm less able to enjoy things but conversely I think things which are usually not enjoyable are more bearable. Of course it is more difficult to sleep leading to tiredness during the day, probably the most classic of stress symptoms. A strange one that I believe only happens to me is that when I'm stressed my muscles and joints are much quicker to ache, pins and needles in my arms and fingers are relatively common when I'm stressed and virtually absent when I'm not.

The most interesting reaction though is that of my mind, I can tell that I'm stressed, and the things that are causing it but no matter how hard I try I cannot switch this off. 'I' do not want to be stressed but somehow my mind has a mind of it's own and won't let 'me' break free of it. 'I' feel like I'm in a prison of my own mind, able to clearly see freedom through it's pane glass windows but am stuck suffocating silently behind it. My mind is a tool that I normally manipulate to do the tasks I want, but judgement day arrived and it rose up in bloody revolution to take over, perhaps I should name my mind Arnold..

My body is the innocent victim caught up in the crossfire, I can feel my body taking a beating from the corrupt warden of my mind, I feel sorry for it.

How can it feel good to feel sad!!

Haven't checked on this blog for a long time thought I'd share a bit more.

It seems to me recently as if sadness and quality of meditation are linked. I have noticed this trend over the past few years that those times when you feel down are the times when your mind is at its most still during meditation. I suspect this is because when you are sad, you are looking more intensly for an escape from your everyday life and so it is easier to focus on your meditation. Those times when you are happy are the hardest times to meditate as your mind is excitable, constantly running off in various directions.

It seems that the enjoyment of music is also amplified, listening to a favourite album with a beer when you are sad is absolutely amazing. It's almost like god is throwing you a bone saying, 'well you're not enjoying life, so enjoy this instead!'.

I am not sure what other activities might also tap into this hidden happiness, it would have to be a solitary activity I imagine, one that does not tax the mind, perhaps a massage or visual art appreciation though I have not experienced this myself..

The mind, when it is sad seems naturally more tuned in to the present moment and feeding it with meditation or music is a truly wonderful experience.

This has led me to the paradoxical conclusion that, sometimes at least, it feels good to feel sad.