I wish I knew how...

[outlier_lynn]

But I don't.


I hang around in the conversation of love and compassion for a reason. If I don't, I will lose my ability to relate with people pretty quickly. I fall back on the person I was for two decades in my teens and twenties. And it is a slow, painful struggle to get it all back.

What I do know:
I know that our past never stops haunting us. It whispers in our ear every minute of our day and sometimes in our dreams. The voice is sometimes loud and sometimes very soft. It sometimes isn't paying a lot of attention to us and it sometimes is very insistent and demanding. I also know that this is a common thread running through people's lives. We worry and we are afraid. We have petty concerns and overwhelming anxieties. We fear for our physical safety and our emotional well being.

I know that most people, including me, tend to be driven around our lives by our circumstances. We create "society" complete with the rules of the game. Then we forget it's a game and start believing the rules are the Truth and the One True Way. I know that when we don't seem to fit the mold, we don't question the mold, but ourselves.

I don't know how to package up my knowing such that I can quickly and easily give it out like a magic pill to people who's lives are very, very difficult in the needless sort of way.

Suffering under the cruelty of others is optional. Suffering under the weight of "should do" is optional. "Should do" is optional. Life is the matrix -- the rules can be bent and broken.



But I will keep trying to learn. Suffering is optional.



Eleanor Roosevelt: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Unknown {tome}: I refuse to tip-toe through life only to arrive safely at my grave.
Grace Murray Hopper: A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.
Helen Keller: Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
Emily Dickinson [without poetic layout]: Love is anterior to life and posterior to Death.
Marilyn Ferguson: Love is a context, not a behavior.
Sue Townsend [from The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4]: Love is the only thing that keeps me sane. [hits very close to home]
Jean Garrigue: Love is the image of ourself until ourself destroys us.
Lorraine Hansberry [A Raisin in the Sun]: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing.
Starhawk: Sex is a sacrament.
Mae West: Sex is an emotion in motion.
Ruth E. Renkel: Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby. [At the Frankenstein Place?]



Love and Light,
Lynn

Comments

[neversremedy.livejournal.com]

!!! ::big joyful hugs::

[rintropy.livejournal.com]

Then we forget it's a game and start believing the rules are the Truth and the One True Way.

i think THIS is the mother of all fuckups... we convince ourselves that we're stuck somewhere we don't want to be when it's really a choice to stay in one place for fear of temporary discomfort.

i think if ben franklin were more of a 20th century pragmatist some of his quotes regarding liberty would've been an assault on our pacifism in the face of a facetious society

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to package up my knowing such that I can quickly and easily give it out like a magic pill to people who's lives are very, very difficult in the needless sort of way.

for one, this is knowledge where somebody else's words can at best open a door, not work as a magic pill.

for another, if this were me whom you were trying to tell, i'd dislike your choice of pronouns, you sound as if you are trivializing my personal pain, and the tone in general comes across to me not as loving, but as patronizing, akin to that of a newly converted proselytizing christian. man, do i not take to those two p's, some of my past pain was inflicted by precisely those sorts of attitudes. and i know and like you. :) if i didn't know you, i'd probably roll my eyes and walk away.

sorry. i feel a little uncomfortable writing this, but you might want to know, as a datapoint.

somebody walking the walk is usually what makes me really take notice.

-piranha (who needs to practice walking a heck of a lot more)

[crazed-lynn.livejournal.com]

I know it can't work like a magic pill, but that doesn't mean I don't want it to work that way. :)

It's not pain that I want to end. It's suffering. And a specific definition of suffering at that.

I want to be able to end the suffering that we make up all on our own. The extra pain we feel when we make something mean something more than was ever stated. It's the beating up of one's self based on conclusions drawn from in sufficient information that I want to reduce to nothing.

And that is doable -- a few people at a time, anyway.

No forced conversions from me. Nor do I think my way is better or worse than many other ways to be or to live with our histories. Mine worked for me.

Thanks for responding especially because it felt uncomfortable to do so. It's one of the many reasons why you continue to hold a speical place in my heart.

As far as walking the walk, I am on my chosen path way, way more often than I am off it.

Love,
Lynn