Thursday, February 22, 2007
St. Valentine, frustration and meaning
I’ve just read, on Europe Press, that the seeing all those hearts on the shops, all that publicity on TV with lovers offering gifts to each others, and all those movies with love and romance abounding during St. Valentine Season, can provoke some anguish and frustration to those who want to have partners but, simply, don’t.
At least that’s what Leonor Casalins said. She said that “all this stimulation offered day after day” could lead to a bigger desire and need of having a partner, “frustrating” those who don’t have but want. According to her, “there is a need to share life with someone e some moment” and “most people need a partner”, among other “biological needs”. This reminds me, once more, of Viktor Frankl, who once said: By his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of the what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true. This is a fact: by loving we allow ourselves to show our potentialities. And, usually people is unaware of that. We know that love is good, and relationships amazing, but we just don’t know why. And we keep searching and searching for this true love to come, to make ourselves more complete, more unique, more humans. Like Majnun searching for Layli everywhere: It is related that one day they came upon Majnun sifting the dust, and his tears flowing down. They said, “What doest thou?” He said, “I seek for Layli.” They cried, “Alas for thee! Layli is of pure spirit, and thou seekest her in the dust!” He said, “I seek her everywhere; haply somewhere I shall find her.” Baha'u'llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 6. Maybe we should be aware our Layli could be everywhere. But should we be looking for her everywhere? I don’t recall reading Majnun ever finding her, just like the poem from Saná’í: Never the covetous heart shall come to the stealer of hearts,
Never the shrouded soul unite with beauty's rose. Frankl explains us that by searching pleasure by itself we shall end up frustrating both the will of pleasure and the will of meaning. Furthermore he adds that pleasure should be the secondary effect of our meaningful actions. Only this way, the “covetous heart” can progress to a degree where it shall attain the hearts, and the “shrouded soul” “unite with beauty's rose”. Labels: Bahá'u'lláh, couples, emotions, Frankl, love, relationships
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Twofold life (3 of 3)
Dwelling in that fear (that most times is not even conscious), each one of us strives to know the other... in an effort that only permits us to know what the other likes to read or do, what kind of food he/she is pleased by, or the type of movies he/she prefers... without understanding that we are keeping ourselves in a superficial plan. We do not know the true interests or the aims the other wants to achieve, we do not see the way he/she interacts in family or even what the conception of family may be. Preferring not to take a risk, we maintain ourselves in the ephemeral world of pleasures and diversion!
Diversion and pleasure are a part of life, undoubtedly! But the next reflection, the third step, should really be: “which is the aim, the objective: the pleasure by pleasure, or a twofold life?”. That is because a life of total hedonism has never permitted, nor shall ever permit, reaching a twofold life filled with meaning. Pleasure should be seen as a natural reward for something that is done, and not as an aim of everything we do!
And that is probably the biggest cause of couple-conflicts... or even couple-split: the shock when trying to live a twofold life, they find out they barely know each other and live two lives of one.
I once had the opportunity of observing, in therapy, a couple with decades of matrimony, then unstructured by suspicion, envy and dispute. Being asked by the therapist: “if it is so bad, then why did you marry him?”, she lowers her tone of voice, like in complicity with the therapist, or by shame, or perhaps simply by not having a better answer, she smiles and says: “you know, sex was too good!”.
Only when we have given the next step, finding responsibility in knowing the true character of the other, and not worrying only about the pleasures of life, we shall be able to reach that state in which hell is no longer the other (paraphrasing Sartre), and we start agreeing with Gabriel Marcel when he says “others, for me, are heaven”. Only in this state of transcendence one and one no longer are two, existing only as one being, new, that lives a twofold life.
Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, March 2006). Labels: couples, family, fear, meaning, values
Monday, January 08, 2007
Twofold life (2 of 3)
Only through reflecting, and the positioning between those two extremities, will there be forward steps in the relationship. Better said, why speak of relationships when we can talk about meeting? It is by meeting the other that I see who I am, that I see how I act, how I think, and react. It is through this communication (that in Latin could mean “put in common”) that commitment appears (“sending myself to the other”).  And how do two lives become one, one twofold life? Some great thinkers affirm that the human being is a giving being. That means, the same way it is the nature of the fountain to outpour water, showing itself alive and transmitting life, it is the nature of the human being to endow himself incessantly – endow his richness, endow his time, his energy, his values, his support and his love to all those surrounding him. Nevertheless, it needs preparation; a firm and conscious effort of self-knowledge and knowledge of the other. It is this way that, once more, we come to the meeting. It is in this meeting that the “I” and the “You” transcend to a monadic “We” in which the human being becomes able to overcome his limits. Knowing the other means knowing myself; because I reflect myself on the other, as a shadow that manifests itself only when there is a light to shine.
And this light might well be Love! A love that should not be blind, but, once again, conscious! And the problem comes when love, which is born blind, wants to remain blind– or better – when we insist to remain blind, afraid of knowing the real character of the other, the companion we have idealized, afraid that knowing we no longer want him/her; afraid of being abandoned; afraid of solitude: afraid! Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, Portugal, March 2006).
Labels: communication, couples, fear, human nature, love, relationships, self-knowledge, transcendence
Sunday, January 07, 2007
Twofold life (1 of 3)
Twofold life, or two lives? Probably, the first of all steps is defining the relationship in which each one finds him/her-self. Should we be talking about a life of feelings, emotions, values and objective sharing, or about two lives living together, related to each other and that have some things in common (house, expenses...)?
Sam Cyrous
(published in Psicologia Actual, Portugal, March 2006).
Labels: couples, emotions, feelings, values
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