When was the last time you lost something you had attached meaning to? Be it a special bracelet you wore, a belief you no longer hold, or a relationship you thought would last.
What did you feel? A million emotions that could be summed to two: love, and fear.
There’s a Chinese saying called 门当户对 (mén dāng hù duì), or both the gates and houses match. It was used for determining one’s spouse based on social and economic status, and how one should marry within their class.
I call that bullshit.
Not disregarding the economic benefits of being with someone within your class, the ease of relating and finding common values and social pursuits, or the allotment of time/resource available for both parties to make it work, but…
isn’t love supposed to transcend all?
And what is [relational] love, really? Other than a practice you do, the work that requires time within and outside of a relation-ship. The ingredients of trust / emotional availability / values / priorities / coping mechanisms / etc, not unlike a practice of any other medium.
Can relational love prosper without self-love?
Can there be a price (status) on love? And subsequently, worth? Is my self-worth ‘enough’ to be loved and to love another (or myself)?
Humans are funny, because love really shouldn’t be that hard. It’s all about perspective. You might see a musician on the street and think ‘that could never be me, I’m too (untalented / lazy / other self-pitying statement). OR you could be inspired to take action, and see that musician as a shining example to your own greatness. Don’t get me wrong, I can get stuck in that woe-is-me mindset too. It’s natural for capitalist realism to instill that belief in you, when you have no choice but to make money in order to have time to live (and other leisure).
It can also be hard to trust love when you experience it, for we live in a transactional society that demands us to be productive and work through the grief of genocide and constant colonial oppression worldwide. We label character traits as mental illnesses and habits as addictions, when these differences come from the lack of systemic and structural support of a society that demands us to produce unlimited output from limited resources.
And when nuances like love come into our lives, or as I like to put it, is transmuted into our lives from our inner work of self-love, we question if it can really withstand the turmoil that is demanded of us, because we want to believe it will, and although it takes work, we are more than willing to do this work, because it’s worth it … more than any other work that pays the bills (right?)
I catch myself slipping into the comfort of my privilege, that which my college degree which taught me how to be a capitalist and my job which teaches me how to be an obedient worker allows me the time to pursue my leisurely interests.
I’m a firm believer in creativity, the divine source of infinite Love that pushes us to continue to live, regardless of how bad things are. Unlike any other being alive, humans have the capacity to understand time (incorrectly imo), that the past and future are not the now, but that we must do everything in our power to preserve the past and the future. Humans are funny, because being present shouldn’t be that hard.
But the bills, the appointments, the debt, the this, the that, the past trauma and future worries that have its hold on you. It’s all too easy to go insane when everyone is telling you to stay present but you have a million things on your to-do list and not one of them is about regulating yourself.
I could tell you to wake up early, to take a yoga class, to meditate, journal, or eat healthier, but these will probably amount to 40% of your well-being. The other 60% is playing with other humans, developing deeper intimacy with your friends, and not having to worry about your next paycheck. And the bar can go lower, in the face of ethnic cleansing in Palestine, the uncontrollable greed and racism that disallow basic needs, that kind of violence (from the same oppressor you pay your taxes to) isn’t afforded the luxury of overthinking, of being a victim of life.
Perhaps this is an ode to my past self, or to every other self-driven human who seeks a life of wealth and secured comfort, that there’s really no meaning to your endless seeking.
In the end, it is the oppressor vs. the oppressed. It’s hard to see it any other way. The oppressed is every single worker and employee who depends on their job to survive, while the oppressor gets to call the shots. Becoming a girl-boss doesn’t make you any less oppressed, you’ve just glorified your experiences and transmuted them into financial freedom, but you are still a slave to your bills.
A tangent back to love. In a dysregulated world of war, oppression, and the commodification of your favorite color, I quote myself from September 24th of this year:
[My romantic partnership] has made me learn I can be myself and still be loved, that my voice and talents and feelings are incredibly important, that I must trust myself and protect myself above all else. Because my life is a sacred path, my soul is a sanctuary, and my partnership should be a bedrock for me to blossom, not a footstool for me to be glorified or a pedestal to aspire to.
As I learn to let go of my assumptions in order to step into a radically loving perspective of life, knowing the terrorism that pervades this era, I find hope in my inner optimism and the communities that believe in the same.
It’s apparent how desensitized most of society have become to death. We’re expected to not talk about the blatant war crimes and regulate ourselves with the disarray of knowledge we find on Wikipedia. (If I plug my guided meditations at a later time, know that I will imbue them with magical healing energies.)
Love, and Grief. Two sides of the same coin. For a long time, I thought that the space and time I lost with my father (and the memories we have) would forever be an empty space that becomes more enclosed in layers of life. Only recently, when my mom found some old footage and I saw videos of him for the first time, did I realize that grief is not limited to the physical representation of a space lost. It clicked within me that grief is merely transmuted to something else, whether that’s unsustainable habits to cope with the loss, or sustainable ones to open the portal to love.
. . .
Like always, take my opinion with your critical lens. I hope my musings have enlightened or broadened your perspective, and perhaps encouraged you to take a chance and be the voice you’ve always needed. I welcome any and all feedback, as I’m always learning to be a better leftist in practice of radical liberation.