School starts in a week. I still have a very very wrongly wired digestive system. Just the other day I barfed what I had for lunch the other day and it's gross because I still recognized it. Right now, I'm craving for Goldilock's brownies.
I just want to share an email I read a while ago. It aint really much but it's about partners and marriage. :)
PARTNERS AND MARRIAGE
By Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz
I have never met a man who didn't want to be
loved. But I have seldom met a man who didn't
fear
marriage. Something about the closure seems
constricting, not enabling. Marriage seems easier
to understand for what it cuts out of our lives
than for what it makes possible within our lives.
When I was younger this fear immobilized me. I
did not want to make a mistake.I saw my friends
get married for reasons of social acceptability,
or sexual fever, or just because they thought it
was the logical thing to do. Then I watched, as
they and their partners became embittered and
petty in their dealings with each other. I looked
at older couples
and saw, at best, mutual
toleration of each other. I imagined a lifetime
of loveless nights and bickering and could not
imagine subjecting myself or someone else to such
a fate.
And yet, on rare occasions, I would see old
couples who somehow seemed to glow in each
other's presence. They seemed really in love, not
just dependent upon each other and tolerant of
each other's foibles. It was an astounding sight,
and it seemed impossible. How, I asked myself,
can they have survived so many years of sameness,
so much irritation at the others habits? What
keeps love alive in them, when most of us seem
unable to even stay together, much less love each
other?
The central secret seems to be in choosing well.
There is something to the claim of fundamental
compatibility. Good people can create a bad
relationship, even though they both dearly want
the relationship to succeed. It is important to
find someone with whom you can create a good
relationship from the outset. Unfortunately, it
is hard to see clearly in the early
stages.
Sexual hunger draws you to each other and colors
the way you see yourselves together. It blinds
you to the thousands of little things by which
relationships eventually survive or fail. You
need to find a way to see beyond this initial
overwhelming sexual
fascination. Some people
choose to involve themselves sexually and ride
out the most heated period of sexual attraction
in order to see what is on the other side.
This can work, but it can also leave a trail of
wounded hearts. Others deny the sexual side
altogether in an attempt to get to know each
other apart from their sexuality. But they
cannot
see clearly, because the presence of unfulfilled
sexual desire looms so large that it keeps them
from having any normal perception of what life
would be like together.
The truly lucky people are the ones who manage to
become long-time friends before they realize they
are attracted to each other. They get to know
each other's laughs, passions, sadness, and
fears. They see each other at their worst and at
their best. They share time together before they
get swept up into the entangling intimacy of
their sexuality.
This is the ideal, but not often possible. If you
fall under the spell of your sexual attraction
immediately, you need to look beyond it for other
keys to
compatibility. One of these is laughter.
Laughter tells you how much you will enjoy each
others company over the long term.
If your laughter together is good and healthy,
and not at the expense of others, then you have a
healthy relationship to the world. Laughter is
the child of surprise. If you can make each other
laugh, you can always surprise each other. And if
you can always surprise each other, you can
always keep the world around you
new.
Beware of a relationship in which there is no
laughter. Even the most intimate relationships
based only on seriousness have a tendency to turn
sour. Over time, sharing a common serious
viewpoint on the world tends to turn you against
those who do not share the same
viewpoint, and
your relationship can become based on being
critical together.
After laughter, look for a partner who deals with
the world in a way you respect. When two people
first get together, they tend to see their
relationship as existing only in the space
between the two of them. They find each other
endlessly fascinating, and the overwhelming power
of the emotions they are sharing obscures the
outside world. As the relationship ages and
grows, the outside world becomes important again.
If your partner treats people or circumstances in
a way you can't accept, you will inevitably come
to grief.Look at the way she cares for others and
deals with the daily affairs of life. If that
makes you love her more, your love will grow. If
it does not, be careful. If you do not respect
the way you each deal with the world around you,
eventually the two of you will not respect each
other.
Look also at how your partner confronts the
mysteries of life. We live on the cusp of poetry
and practicality, and the real life of the heart
resides in the poetic. If one of you is deeply
affected by the mystery of the unseen in life and
relationships, while the other is drawn only to
the literal and the practical, you must take care
that the distance does not become an unbridgeable
gap that leaves you each feeling isolated and
misunderstood.
There are many other keys, but you must
find them
by yourself. We all have unchangeable parts of
our hearts that we will not betray and private
commitments to a vision of life that we will not
deny. If you fall in love with someone who cannot
nourish those inviolable parts of you, or if you
cannot nourish them in her, you will find
yourselves growing further apart until you live
in separate worlds
where you share the business
of life, but never touch each other where the
heart lives and dreams. From there it is only a
small leap to the cataloging of petty hurts and
daily failures that leaves so many couples bitter
and unsatisfied with their mates.
So choose carefully and well. If you do, you will
have chosen a partner with whom you can grow, and
then the real miracle of marriage can take place
in your hearts. I pick my words carefully when I
speak of a miracle. But I think it is not too
strong a word. There is a miracle in marriage. It
is called transformation. Transformation is one
of the most common events of nature. The seed
becomes the flower. The cocoon becomes the
butterfly. Winter becomes spring and love becomes
a child. We never question these, because we see
them around us every day. To us they are not
miracles, though if we did not know them they
would be impossible to believe.
Marriage is a transformation we choose to make.
Our love is planted like a seed, and in time it
begins to flower. We cannot know the flower that
will blossom, but we can be sure that a bloom
will come.
If you have chosen carefully and wisely, the
bloom will be good. If you have chosen poorly or
for the wrong
reason, the bloom will be flawed.
We are quite willing to accept the reality of
negative transformation in a marriage. It was
negative transformation that always had me
terrified of the bitter marriages that I feared
when I was younger. It never occurred to me to
question the dark miracle that transformed love
into harshness and bitterness. Yet I was unable
to
accept the possibility that the first heat of
love could be transformed into something positive
that was actually deeper and more meaningful than
the heat of fresh passion. All I could believe in
was the power of this passion and the fear that
when it cooled I would be left with something
lesser and bitter.
But there is positive transformation as well.
Like
negative transformation, it results from a
slow accretion of little things. But instead of
death by a thousand blows, it is growth by a
thousand touches of love. Two histories
intermingle. Two separate beings, two separate
presence, two separate consciousness come
together and share a view of life that passes
before them. They remain separate, but they also
become one. There is an expansion of awareness,
not a closure and a constriction, as I had once
feared. This is not to say that there is not
tension and there are not traps. Tension and
traps are part of every choice of life, from
celibate to monogamous to having multiple lovers.
Each choice contains within it the lingering
doubt that the road not taken somehow more
fruitful and exciting, and each becomes dulled to
the richness that it alone contains.
But only marriage allows life to deepen and
expand and be leavened by the knowledge that two
have chosen, against all odds, to become one.
Those who live together without marriage can know
the pleasure of shared company, but there is a
specific gravity in
the marriage commitmentthat
deepens that experience into something richer and
more complex.
So do not fear marriage, just as you should not
rush into it for the wrong reasons. It is an act
of faith and it contains within it the power of
transformation. If you believe in your heart that
you have found someone with whom you are able to
grow, if you have sufficient faith that you can
resist the endless attraction of the road not
taken and the partner not chosen, if you have the
strength of heart to embrace the cycles and
seasons that your love will experience, then you
may be ready to seek the miracle that marriage
offers. If not, then wait. The easy grace of a
marriage well made is worth your patience. When
the time comes, a thousand flowers will
bloom...endlessly.
A lot of people talk about love and commitment and the likes. What is it really? The thought of committing to a lot of people is horrendous - at least I thought so once in my life. But I guess old age is getting to me and I learn that each day IS a commitment to live so what is there to be afraid of?
Anyway, love is and will remain something abstract to anyone and everyone no matter what the scientists will say about it. It is a feeling and will remain an emotion no matter how many hormones would answer that love is their doing.
I'm babbling. Who cares? I have tons of things to do but I choose to read all my stagnant emails. How cute could I get? Hehehe
Bye now
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