snippets of ambiguity... i'd like to claim that if i had time, i would craft an entry out of each of the quotes and lines I've got in my journal, but the truth is that i wouldn't even know where to start figuring out where they come from or where they're going. I'm working on thinking in my head and not out loud, cause that seems like a good skill to have.
my heart is alternating between beating way too fast and feeling a bit like it's about to break. i'm not sure what this means.
yes i do. it's fear. the waiting kind.
"our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasures" - Rainer Maria Rilke
*
i've spent most of the day thinking about some of the Buddhist teachings I was exposed to in the Himalayas... I thought of this: "We need to make a very clear distinction between what is in our ego's self-interest and what is in our ultimate interest; it is from mistaking one for the other that all our suffering comes". From the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
and: "...Isn't it absurd, then, that we all long for happiness, yet nearly all our actions and feelings lead us directly away from that happiness? Could there be any greater sign that our whole view of what real happiness is, and of how to attain it, is radically flawed?"
I remember another line that said, essentially, "there are only two certainties: we will die. and we don't know when."
The idea I remember most said that we can only be free when we embrace the reality that life is impermanent, and recognize the futility of basing our lives on craving or grasping the way we do.
I don't crave material things, so I've always felt above those admonitions to "free ourselves from material wealth". But today I've been thinking how much this applies to our personal relationships. I crave people. I need them, I can't imagine life without certain people.
In a sense, I crave owning people, knowing they are mine. And as much as I try not to, I root my quest for happiness in that ownership, in having those people. Having their love, their support, their loyalty. But they won't always be there. Or *I* won't always be here. There will be change. Does happiness come from more than just satisfaction in relationships with others?
[ow. when i pose rhetorical diary questions, i suddenly feel like Sarah Jessica Parker. grosso. I digress]
It seems so obvious that happiness does not come from satisfaction in interpersonal relationships... and yet... i'm most unhappy when I feel that i'm alone.
Maybe it's this grasping and craving they describe that makes so many relationships seem to have a fundamental disconnect between what they actually are and what they purport to be. It seems like so many of our relationships are about what people do for us- we want what will make US happy. Maybe we convince ourselves that it's the best for all involved, but aren't those urges rooted in personal gain?
Don't we use these relationships to validate our own existence? They're not as pure as we want to pretend.
guh. i think that's all.
6:28 p.m. - 2005-05-31
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