Sage Thoughts

There comes a point in life where relationships as we have known them start to seem foggy and not as bright. A place where the intimacy and connection fade and we are standing there with the one we have loved so well wondering where the meaning of us went.

There comes a time when we have to look inside and no matter how painful the choice is, we have to choose what is best for us and for the path we are walking on. Purging out all the memories of how relationships are meant to go as taught to us by our parents, our peers, society and life. We realize that things do not always work out as hoped.

Midlife is prime time for these kinds of changes in perspective. After all the trappings of the things we thought we were supposed to do with our lives are achieved and or fall by the wayside, we start to move inward in pursuit of our purest passions. Some people can do this by learning something new, taking up a new hobby. Some people need more drastic change like moving to a new place or changing jobs, still others realize the life they have built over the past 20 years leaves them drained and feeling numb, so they leave relationships that were understood to be for life.

As we travel inward everything in our world starts to feel more acute. We listen for the whispers that we heard so readily as children and young adults. The guiding voice of our heart telling us what feels right or not quite. Honesty with self is crucial at this time of life, for what good are hearing your whispers if you deny the message? Courage and faith are paramount to see us through to the next steps, the next phase on the path. Often there is collateral damage; strewn about are empty bank accounts, lost status, dead or dying relationships. It is our right, our choice and our obligation to leave them all behind,  right there on the path, the moment the burden becomes too heavy and the reward too slim. Dragging around dead weight only slows us down, makes us unable to make choices and unable to be our authentic selves. It slows us down like a quagmire, as we trudge along carrying all the extra baggage of past resentments and decisions gone badly.

The only way to move forward then is to lighten the load. If it doesn’t help you, serve you, raise you up, it has to go. Put it on the back burner if you think someday there may be use for it, but forget it for now. Or just plain walk away forever if you see no use for it.

It is like springtime closet cleaning, assessment time. If it works, if it feeds you, keep it and shelter it. If not, release it to the wind. The path unfolds before you and now with eyes and heart wide open you are able to move forward one step, one day, one opportunity at a time. Love will come, money will come, strength will come just at the moments you need it most.  Faith, Courage, Strength, Wisdom are the jewels we pick up as we walk the paths to our true selves. As we share who we truly are with the world and help make the world a better place one interaction at a time.

Relationships have never been easy. They are hardest yet in the 21^st century I believe. For years I have fought to keep my relationships personal. I know that sounds crazy, since relationships are the most personal thing right? Wrong. In this electronic age they are a dying art.

I have left 2 marriages because of a lack of desire and maybe on some level a lack of ability to compete with what is “out there”. My first husband had a video game habit that cast me aside night after night for 16 months, for chasing the enemy, more levels and more energy to defend his world.

My Second husband left me in the dust of the pursuit of more code, more html, webpage design, and eventually chat with anyone but me. I left him in the dust to the tune of losing lots of money in the process just to find a relationship that was once again personal.

Now I sit here with that person, night after night while he sooths his internet surfing, facebook voyeurism addictions. Night after night I watch him scroll and read and surf, if not on the computer, then playing scrabble with people he doesn’t even know via his phone. I have recently gotten to enjoy this at work too with my co-workers . Relationships are hard to come by these days without having a screen of some sort between you and the person you are trying to relate to.

How to handle it? I feel myself withdrawing, thinking of ways to unplug and not even picking up the email, facebook for a day at a time. I don’t have a smart phone and the way I see it sucking people in around me I don’t want one. Relationships are personal, they are meant to be personal. People seem to be filling the need for company, entertainment, conversation, all the things we spent time with other people for in hours upon hours of screen time relating in some way to strangers.

I have watched this phenomenon grow since 1995 when I got my first taste of AOL. So many men complained their wives were boring, I was so much more interesting in chat than their wives were in person. I see now why. They were ignoring their wives, who probably sat next to them naked on the couch without even getting noticed. I see now what this desire for novelty does to relationships. It may not have been the marriages, may not have been my judgement all the while. It was the electronic phantoms that enmeshed themselves where a human connection between 2 people used to be. Just as is happening right now as I write this, sitting on a “love seat” with the man I love, being ignored another night, one of many since he moved in 3 months ago. It seems some sage with a blog is more enthralling than human communication in real time he could be having with me at this very moment. I can’t, I won’t, I should not have to compete with such trivial things.

What is love now? Is love and having a successful relationship learning to surf the web next to the one you love, conducting your relationship in chat boxes side by side? If that’s it, maybe I was wrong to leave my last marriage, we had that down to a science.

I am moody, I am lost in thought. I am contemplating if I want to go forward living my evenings this way, living my life this way with a man who can not put the internet down. I guess maybe I need to find an old fashioned man, someone who would rather talk, play scrabble, write love songs than read over and over the trivialities of “facebook friends”. That phenomenon in itself, the virtuality of it becoming reality for many is just plain sad. I don’t want to fit in to this. I don’t want to be overcome by this. I am too real for this virtual planet. Only nature and god are real, the rest like words on a page are illusions, creations of our own minds to occupy the hours we should be spending going inward and preparing for better things.