There can be no love where dominance resides; the purpose of life is gaining the maturity and depth to love yourself and another. Developing the courage, however one gains it, to put all your faith in the act of love; giving your acknowledgement, recognition, trust, responsibility to your daily life. Putting all your energy into the development of one’s soul. In the act of love we make the world more inhabitable; we invest people with the morale, and the wisdom, to gain a sense of their position in the world. Living a fulfilling life becomes impossible when we have no sense of , or respect for, our bodies; respecting our body means being attuned to the shifts and changes happening inside and through you. When we never gain a sense of harmony; when we never become acquainted with our bodies we become a disconnected, static, unattuned stranger to ourselves. One day the threshold of pain will become unbearable, and suddenly we are thrusted into the accumulation of that built up pain. We never learn to reveal, and release; which is the only way we ever grow. In a relationship of mutuality and honesty with the world; the more honest and vulnerable, we become, the closer we move into attunement with our bodies. There are moments in our life when we are in need of a recalibration; the repression of our fears, shames, and desires become a volcanic cauldron waiting to explode; this repression, I believe, leads to our awakening, or what it commonly called a mental breakdown. This breakdown, or consequence of unfulfillment, is not a failure, but an alarm that we must give attention. We have to learn the art of loving; which means we have to learn to give this love to ourselves.
Most of us were never taught the importance of affirming our lives; giving the base of our self esteem to anything outside of us puts our peace on a rickety bridge. Once we have relinquished our sense of self we become people pleasing, ruminating, and continuously looking for the world outside to affirm our identity. This denial of the self happens when we were not given body autonomy or assurance as a child of your innate value. We are estimating each others value by the money we make; by the positions we hold at various jobs. And, as we all know but refuse to accept, money does not provide people with the means to love. We are internalizing assumptions and accepting standards that act as a bulwark between us and our self-respect. Unable to deal with the barriers placed on our self-esteem our apathy and stiffness, to acceptance, begins to grow; the feeling of moving forward and at the same time being exactly in the same spot is a universal human trauma.
There is a rebirthing, and repackaging, of old, sexist, Victorian standards; these standards are completely dubious. They are a mere fever dream that has not worked for anyone; a naïve attempt to make the world simple. People are praising standards that activists and thought leaders worked to change for a reason. Growing up I was given few variations in examples of what a man could become, so I grew up associating repressing pain and silence with manhood. I grew up believing strength was dependent on the amount of money we made; my sense of self dependent on the amount of women I gave attention. The women associated womanhood with silence and sticking by her man through abuse, terrorism, and sexism. There is no life in standing by ideas that do not come from our own mind; we go against our bodies and impulses by living with impossible standards. We do not live in separate spheres but a mutual interchange of responsibility; to become loving adults will require all of us to be able to move in and out of these spheres. We have no right to enforce these harmful, damaging, emotionally stunting, fever dream standards. They were merely a consequence to the development of industry. These standards take us away from our true focus; our relationship to one another. How can we: see each other deeper, recognize our uniqueness, give each other the space to be, and love one another better. These are the questions we need to ask so we can learn to build new standards, and leave behind the old damaging myth of separate spheres.
Love is an attempt to see ourselves and the world without any narcissistic pressures; we must have the courage to see the world and situations objectively. Our journey to self love and attunement with the body begins once we have ripped our identities from the clutches of the world. This effort contains our ability to love the world. Most nations, governments, organizations, men and women base who they are by what they consider someone else. We say you are a bad person; that makes me a good person. By accepting the rigidity of these definitions; we want to make sense of ourselves in our relationship between other people. Since all of us exist in a multicolored mosaic; the truth about ourselves must come from the daily choices we make.
Coming into ourselves involves attuning to our needs, so often we reject and deny our emotions to, what we believe, keep the peace. There is no virtue in preventing ourselves from experiencing the full capacity of our rage or unfulfillment. Embracing our childishness and playfulness, allowing our minds to wander with irrationality and impracticality lets us experience our totality. The ideas that do not feed us starve us and disconnect us; this unloving repression of individuality and freedom causes us to reject everything the world brings: new love, new opportunities, and new pain. Then we withdraw further from the world; love, the greatest act we can choose, is giving your life to a condition, a space, an energy. Stretching our imagination allowing our minds to freely play, and not becoming stuck by the seriousness of adult life; we begin to predict and line up everyday next to each other. But imagination creates room in our daily lives to notice the obscurity and strangeness of our lives.
Love is the culmination of action, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility. If we are unable to give these, very strange and individual, acts to ourselves; we will never allow ourselves to receive someone else. Giving ourselves is not any easier once we have gained the therapeutic understanding of our suffering. Because we still have to make the jump, to reveal ourselves honestly and make the commitment. Vulnerability, I believe, is a commitment to another person and yourself; it is a dedication to the present moment. We fantasize and idealize the future in hopes of a utopian happiness, but all we are given is this moment. We must use it, appreciate it, and give ourselves over to it. All our narcissistic, and naïve, attempts at controlling the outcomes of situations only prevents us from living in the moment. People want us to open ourselves up; especially those blessed with partners willing to catch, and hold, them. Being vulnerable is a promise to our body that we will respect its emotions and sensations, but so often we self-sabotage; creating imperfections and driving a bulwark between people that care for our spirits. We can not see the world as a constant threat to our sense of self; we put ourselves, on a cellular level, on attack mode even when there is nothing coming for us. Vulnerability requires us to be willing to reassess and let go of information we do not need while incorporating new information. Opening yourself up emotionally and sexually is sacred, and we have to assess the character of the person we are giving our consciousness over too. You have to be willing to be hurt; that is the risk we have to take. The only way for us to become attuned to our sensations — so we can respect ourselves and love others — is by “going for broke”.
It is time for us to break the silence between us and the expression of our emotions. We can only learn to listen by creating the space to be vulnerable; we can not dominate, or control, the world around us and expect to be loved without a internal fear of a anticipated danger. We must release a lot to love the people that deserve to be loved by us; it is a blessing for someone to come into your life and want to love you. Your love is also a blessing and we can only get to that space by trusting, being patient, recognizing each other, and caring for one another. We must never confuse toughness with repression and silence for strength; where there are disparate levels of power love cannot exist. Love being an act of the will; we have to choose love everyday. Even on those periods when you think you are moving forward, but somehow end up exactly where you started. While, love, not an easy choice; it provides the most likely chance of transforming the world.