Coming to the point.
There is an idea floating through our contemporary world, of which most who are not scientists don't fully understand, myself included. However, the idea posits (as near as I can grasp the current cultural zeitgeist of it) that time may not actually exist as we understand it. In brief, Time is an illusion of perspective. Of course, my personal experience (or perspective, if you will) of time is that I can accrete experience so that my experience grows and I become a slightly different person, either good or bad. In the objective sense, if I learn math or another language, I can use that learning at a later period.
However, the accumulation of experience and its ability to coalesce into learning, is something that I think about in the philosophical sense. Do I, or can I, become a better person by struggling with experiences that are difficult. Pain, as a physical mechanism, teaches us to avoid things that are harmful to us. However, pain also occurs when we have experienced damage to our systems. Is there a point in which damage has occurred, causes pain, and repair is no possible. Is there a difficult experience that damages us as people rather than teaches us how to become better by avoiding that damage in the first place? I am not sure.
It's been too long since I have written here. Seven months? I am no longer in the depths of despair about my being, but I do feel damaged in a way—like my difficult experiences of the recent past will have consequences that extend beyond my time to try and repair the damage, considering that repair may not even be possible. I have hope that I can be guided to a better path, but I feel a lot of regret for not managing my time better in the past. There were so many lost opportunities for something else that it is challenging for me to try and not dwell on them. Part of me feels like I have ignored some internal warnings much to my own peril.
From here on out, I think that what I will be trying to concentrate on is accumulating the virtues that I feel I should acquire, and trying to endure the experiences that are left to me, ones that I do not want, cannot avoid, but will be forced to face regardless of anything I could do to mitigate them. Yes, I will face difficult experiences ahead, but my focus is no longer on making all of the "right" moves to avoid those experiences, but on making the right changes in attitude and behavior to be able to withstand what I cannot avoid and to adapt to the things as best I can.
I have felt attached to someone specific for a very long period of time. Someone with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Someone with whom I wanted to build a future with. However, she does not really want to be with me, even with (or because of) our past together. We have been interacting with each other, with degrees of intensity, for over ten years. Recently (like a few days), I have come to feel that it never be possible to repair that relationship, and not because I haven't tried. I am a man of many faults, but now I fully understand some of our obstacles were not ones I placed in our path. I have tremendous sympathy for the challenges that we faced, and intellectually, I place blame with no-one. Emotionally, I feel burned by the differences in our beings that made reconciliation impossible. I have been sad, seeking a compromise along any route that would not require me to abandon my healthy sense of self. I may have been able to make it work for awhile longer if I forced myself to accept the notion that I was the center of all our problems, that I was focus of all the blame, that my choices alone forced us down this road. But, even after seriously searching long and hard for a way to accept all of the mistakes, I found I could not do it. I may experience bouts of low self-esteem, but at least intellectually, I know while I accept responsibility for my previous poor choices, I cannot accept blame for things that I did not cause, nor endure the misery of anger that I am not the source of. It is possible for someone to be unconsciously affected by tragedy, and for the effects of that to spill out into other areas of their lives without them recognizing that source. In essence, another person's actions have traveled through time to disrupt my attempts at closeness. The person I was seeking to make a life with is still echoing the earthquake of pain that another person caused.
Of course, to be truly honest, I believe that if she could heal from all of that, I might have a chance at building that life with her. The change this time is that I do not have much hope of that happening anymore. My cajoling, attempts to seek closeness, efforts at being sensitive and communicative were all rejected. I have done all I know how to do.
Now, I face a future that no longer includes her. I experience regret and remorse for that loss of a potential relationship. Perhaps I always will. But, I now know that I cannot be chained to a future that may not be. I have to move on and try and be a better person in the future.
However, the accumulation of experience and its ability to coalesce into learning, is something that I think about in the philosophical sense. Do I, or can I, become a better person by struggling with experiences that are difficult. Pain, as a physical mechanism, teaches us to avoid things that are harmful to us. However, pain also occurs when we have experienced damage to our systems. Is there a point in which damage has occurred, causes pain, and repair is no possible. Is there a difficult experience that damages us as people rather than teaches us how to become better by avoiding that damage in the first place? I am not sure.
It's been too long since I have written here. Seven months? I am no longer in the depths of despair about my being, but I do feel damaged in a way—like my difficult experiences of the recent past will have consequences that extend beyond my time to try and repair the damage, considering that repair may not even be possible. I have hope that I can be guided to a better path, but I feel a lot of regret for not managing my time better in the past. There were so many lost opportunities for something else that it is challenging for me to try and not dwell on them. Part of me feels like I have ignored some internal warnings much to my own peril.
From here on out, I think that what I will be trying to concentrate on is accumulating the virtues that I feel I should acquire, and trying to endure the experiences that are left to me, ones that I do not want, cannot avoid, but will be forced to face regardless of anything I could do to mitigate them. Yes, I will face difficult experiences ahead, but my focus is no longer on making all of the "right" moves to avoid those experiences, but on making the right changes in attitude and behavior to be able to withstand what I cannot avoid and to adapt to the things as best I can.
I have felt attached to someone specific for a very long period of time. Someone with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Someone with whom I wanted to build a future with. However, she does not really want to be with me, even with (or because of) our past together. We have been interacting with each other, with degrees of intensity, for over ten years. Recently (like a few days), I have come to feel that it never be possible to repair that relationship, and not because I haven't tried. I am a man of many faults, but now I fully understand some of our obstacles were not ones I placed in our path. I have tremendous sympathy for the challenges that we faced, and intellectually, I place blame with no-one. Emotionally, I feel burned by the differences in our beings that made reconciliation impossible. I have been sad, seeking a compromise along any route that would not require me to abandon my healthy sense of self. I may have been able to make it work for awhile longer if I forced myself to accept the notion that I was the center of all our problems, that I was focus of all the blame, that my choices alone forced us down this road. But, even after seriously searching long and hard for a way to accept all of the mistakes, I found I could not do it. I may experience bouts of low self-esteem, but at least intellectually, I know while I accept responsibility for my previous poor choices, I cannot accept blame for things that I did not cause, nor endure the misery of anger that I am not the source of. It is possible for someone to be unconsciously affected by tragedy, and for the effects of that to spill out into other areas of their lives without them recognizing that source. In essence, another person's actions have traveled through time to disrupt my attempts at closeness. The person I was seeking to make a life with is still echoing the earthquake of pain that another person caused.
Of course, to be truly honest, I believe that if she could heal from all of that, I might have a chance at building that life with her. The change this time is that I do not have much hope of that happening anymore. My cajoling, attempts to seek closeness, efforts at being sensitive and communicative were all rejected. I have done all I know how to do.
Now, I face a future that no longer includes her. I experience regret and remorse for that loss of a potential relationship. Perhaps I always will. But, I now know that I cannot be chained to a future that may not be. I have to move on and try and be a better person in the future.
