Living Under the Influence.

I always thought it was bizarre that if someone were to accidentally kill or injure another human being while driving under the influence, their penalty, in many cases, would be less severe compared to if the driver were sober. It always struck me as pretty disturbing that simply because the driver's faculties weren't completely present, he's not as completely at fault. While I still find this odd, I now understand the logic. Perhaps this line of thinking should apply to people who claim to be in love.

Love can be an addiction just as potent as those registered under DEA Schedule I - often, more so. The high can be just as euphoric, and the consequences, just as damaging.

We often hear people advising, "never trust an addict," and yet the people closest to us who are addicted to love are the people we trust with absolutely everything. We let them into our space, physical and emotional, and we give them permission to stay, permission to take what they want - from our refrigerated items to our most personal secrets. Yet, we insist on feeling betrayed when things do not go as planned and our partner falters in some aspect. Why the sense of betrayal?

"I want this to last forever."

"I want to be in your life always."

"I would do absolutely anything for you."

How seriously should the above statements be taken when the producer of these words has an abnormal spike of oxytocin in their brain - or an excess of seratonin?

It's a difficult question to answer. No one wants to go through a relationship with a cynical attitude, and no one really wants to be overly cautious so as to not run the risk of having inadvertently lied, at some point. We all want to be sincere. Time (compounded with reflection), of course, is the only entity which can provide true clarity, but, by then you would have already invested yourself so fully, so completely into the relationship at hand - all your emotions, all your dreams, your saltshakers and coffeepots, your love and unintentional lies.

Such is the paradox of love.

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life and Love

I believe every child at some point in their life has proclaimed to their parent some version or another of: "You don't understand." However, not every child is so lucky as to truly believe their parent when they respond, smiling, "Of course, I do." 

Last night my parents and I were watching one of my favorite movies, (500) Days of Summer. It was one of the seldom nights where my dad came home from work not utterly exhausted, so I seized the opportunity to show him one movie I know and love that consistently culminates in debate and analysis after viewing. I love everything about that movie, which isn't to say, though, that it doesn't distress me every time I watch it. During the part where Summer visits Tom's apartment, late at night, after they fought about the "scene" he made at the bar, Summer says to Tom:

"I shouldn't have done that - gotten mad at you."

Tom replies,

"Look, I know we don't have to put labels on it, I get that, but I need some consistency... I need to know that you're not going to wake up in the morning and feel differently."

Heartbreakingly, frustratingly, and any other adverb imaginable that can convey a mix of melancholy and puzzlement, Summer remarks, "I can't give that to you, no one can."

I turned to my dad and asked him, "Is that true? Can no one really provide that?" He smiled and told me to ask him again after the movie. 

Once the film finished, he sat up and got into discussion mode. He said, "Gunita, trust is the outcome of a relationship - not the precondition." He went on to explain that if the relationship at hand matures enough over time, Tom's expectation is a perfectly reasonable one to have. In a beautiful elaboration, he quoted M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled. Peck says that "falling in love" is when two people pair up, and their individual "ego boundaries" dissolve. "One by one, gradually or suddenly, the ego boundaries snap back into place; gradually or suddenly, they fall out of love. Once again they are two separate individuals. At this point they begin either to dissolve the ties of their relationship or to initiate the work of real loving."

When Peck talks about "ego boundaries," he doesn't mean the ego which connotes arrogance or pretense; he means the mechanism in our mind which gives us our own identity, separate from the relationship of which we are a part. 

I've maintained for a long time now that love is not so much an emotion as it is a conscious, willfull decision we make. So, I resonate very much with the notion Peck describes - initiating the work of real loving - as it involves the reconciliation of your personal identity, goals, values, etc, with the goals and nature of the relationship. However, I explained to my dad that I feel as if the only way to ensure that you don't enter a relationship which ends up being predicated on falsities is to make sure you feel as if you're a complete, whole person who doesn't need external validation all before you commit to another human being. My parents, simultaneously and resoundingly exclaimed that this is a difficult prospect. It was at this point that I delivered my "You don't understand," and my dad lovingly followed with an "Of course, I do."

I vacillate between being certain and uncertain that I can achieve that ideal state of self-sufficiency before entering whatever relationship the Universe has in store for me. Perhaps, though, real love is when you feel completely at peace with some degree of dependency, and one becomes ripe for love once they realize the difference between dependency which is healthy and that which is not.