by Hans Ebert
Trying to remember what was and how and why it happened, and when things began to change, very often takes you through some strange and interesting twists and turns through life.
Right now, piecing together my journey so far has me questioning much- about friendships, career moves, love, marriage and what really matters.
Everyone is different, and for me, it’s about arriving at an honesty I can accept and understand and which leads to a happiness not felt before.
There’s such an importance attached to this these days and which didn’t exist before.
Like I said, we’re all different. We each have our own secrets, truths and lies and working on decisions about how we wish to live our lives.
Over the past two years, I have become more reflective. I guess that’s the right word. Reflective. It’s not withdrawing from life around me, but just being more selective. I tend to tune out a lot more to what’s being said and what’s not being said. Boredom happens way too often. It has to do with those I am with and this “circle of life” keeps getting smaller.
There’s a “Why bother?” attitude as there’s usually some bullsh*t factor attached somewhere.
Guess there always has been. But when there’s so much bs, one swims along merrily with the rest of the fishes.
This new reflection about life happens because of my preoccupation with love, and whether this love is in inverted commas, or if it’s always been just another word for something else.
I’m not pouring cold water on love. Not at all. If I am in love with anything, it’s with the pursuit of romance.
What I am trying to understand is what love is and how it works- for me- and if it ever has worked.
This might seem pretty harsh coming from someone who was married for over twenty years and has a daughter with a woman who swept me off my feet the moment I first set eyes on her.
If, however, love is meant to last forever, what I am questioning is why our marriage didn’t go the distance and why the three people involved in this relationship no longer slow dance to Annie Lennox singing “Why”.
And when stream of consciousness writing flows from mind to heart and onto paper, there’s that person or thought or memory inside of me that wonders why I just mentioned “Why”.
I know what you’re thinking: Jeez, he’s a barrel of laughs. Whatever...
It makes me wonder how in these times of those finding “wellness”, we should be exploring what love’s got to do with it and knowing what this “it” is.
My parents were married for pretty much forever. Were they in love or was it about companionship and staying together because that’s how it’s meant to be?
They never accepted that the wife of mine they knew, and how she and I had gone our separate ways.
To them, one marries and lives happily ever after.
This is not to question the sanctity of marriage, but, then again, I guess, it is because it didn’t work for me and I wonder how many other “me’s” are out there.
I have friends who are married and have affairs and go back to their other halves believing that this is Okay. Maybe. Gawd knows, I did that until there was the realisation that this isn’t how it’s meant to be.
Tinder, online dating sites are where some I know take refuge, or, as Dylan put it, take shelter from the storm. They see nothing wrong with this. They’ve asked me to try it. I can’t. It’s not for me. There’s something wrong about this.
This side trip is especially wrong when I hear a song like “Maybe I’m Amazed” and all the love songs Paul McCartney wrote for his wife Linda. I wonder whether now that he’s remarried, where the late Linda “fits” into his heart and life. He must still carry her with him.
It makes me wonder why certain songs, especially about lost love affect us in such beautifully painful ways.
Is it the perennial romantic and Personal Jesus in some of us?
I meet women- married women with children- and there’s a ‘look’ that says it all. But because of this thing called “marriage”, very real feelings are either numbed or deleted. That chance to be in love are not allowed in and not allowed to happen.
But when you put your head down on that pillow and are alone with your thoughts...
There’s something here. Something to all this mentioned above that needs work.
Podcasts and Clubhouses can wait or continue. But the question of love versus “love” is, at least to me, still to be explored with greater honesty in order to bring about greater clarity... and greater happiness.
Just saying.
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