love, sex, energy, and grounding
Rabble and babble writers in different features, blogs, and forums over the last while have inspired me to share some reflections...
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Love is powerful and multi-facetted. Love is diverse. Love includes many different aspects, which may or may not be present at the same time.
We can be caught up in love for the whole world, or experience moments of being truly alive, at one with all that is.
We can feel compassion and empathy.
We sometimes say we 'love an idea' or we love another's giftedness.
These feelings of love, and many others, may or may not overlap with feelings of sexual energy, depending upon the circumstances.
These feelings occur in the contexts of communities and the commitments of interpersonal relationships.
When there are understood and accepted forms of expression for love, with or without sexual energy, there is less conflict amongst community members.
But when there are unexpressed assumptions, avoidance, or refusal to look at our own or others' feelings, devastating conflict can result.
Think of a couple who have expressed to a community through their words and actions that they share a specific kind of commitment to one another.
If one member of that couple experiences love towards others in the community, and is clear that the form of love doesn't overlap with sexual energy, there is usually little problem.
But if there is no clarity, problems can arise.
These problems are complicated when sexual energy overlaps.
How can people deal with these situations?
There are are several options, which can be called 'grounding' work:
a) Look at the feeling and assess it. What kind of love and/or sexual energy is it? Whatever it is, accept it. In and of itself it is not 'bad' or 'good'. A feeling just 'is', and needs to be acknowledged and accepted.
b) Directly and clearly communicate about feelings with the people involved and trusted counsellors. Start with those closest and with skilled listeners, in the real world. Be honest.
c) Make choices about what to do with those feelings, and communicate again clearly with involved individuals.
This grounding work is not easy.
It is almost impossible to do on the internet, particularly in contexts where people don't use their own names and where there's lots of joking around.
But avoiding it all together can be a recipe for disaster in personal and community relationships.
Personally, in the interests of clarity, I want to tell you that I love you all at babble. I love you for your compassion, your humour, and your work for justice. I love you for being an amazing bunch of people, even if there are serious disagreements.
For me, this does not include sexual energy at present, though I admit to joking around sometimes. I also come from a culture where there is a lot of expression of affection and non-sexual hugging amongst community members.
I am not myself in a committed couple relationship at present, but I am not now nor ever have been interested in disrupting other people's committed relationships. These are extremely precious and deserve the utmost respect and support of the community.
I hope that others are able to share directly their own concerns so that I can understand their situations.
and I really appreciate the space here to be able to share these thoughts.
many thanks for listening,
and lots of love.
Thank you, thanks, for starting this.
Something I think about a lot is how restrictive English words can be We have only one word "love" for the many different feelings of love that we will have in our lifetime for different people, for things, for entities, places, times.
I'm going to move this to "body and soul" if you don't object, since the topic fits there more than "introductions".
As for my thoughts on love, many activists talk about the connection of our activism to our love for our communities and wanting a more fair and just and beautiful world for ourselves and others. We don't often talk about the end-goals of our work because we probably won't get there, but it's good to stop and breathe once in a while and remember what it's all about. So thanks for this thread.
appreciate your note Maysie, and yes i agree with you on the language challenges. there are diverse words in some languages for different aspects of love. it would be interesting to relate some of these.
and there's no problem on moving the thread, i just put it under 'rabble reactions' because it seemed a possible place, body and soul is probably better.
It's also interesting to think of "love" as not only an end-goal - I actually fear that many of us will slide into bitterness in the end - but as an ongoing quality of the process we undergo in discussing and advocating these issues with preferred groups. There is a loving quality to demonstrating and passionately discussing issues we come to care about.
well yes, the process is key, though i'm not sure about 'preferred' groups.
in any case, i've found in this exchange with both Maysie and you, and elsewhere at babble, that posters usually get more than they bargained for in any case. it seems to go with the territory. there is no escape. [grin] [or grrrr]
Thinking about what you said, thanks, about getting more than we bargain for.
I've had many close friendships over the years in which there was love and respect, fairly close relationships with family members, as well as lovers/partners in the "romantic" love category. One common link is that loving in this personal way makes us vulnerable, and being vulnerable takes us to places we never would experience otherwise. The possibility of being hurt is always there, but the feeling of connection and of being known is huge, for me anyways. I also feel that having people in my life who love me makes me want to be a better person, as corny as that might sound.
As for the ability to be passionate and caring about the world, about injustices that affect me personally, as well as injustices that do not affect me personally, it's a different feeling of love for sure, but again worthwhile. Being an activist in community, where we can celebrate victories and just be together (virtually or otherwise) to support each other during non-victorious times, is also what keeps me going and energized.
And yes, the ongoing quality of the process, that's very true.
"thanks": "...i'm not sure about 'preferred' groups"
What I mean is that there are some groups you don't want to bother tussling with. In others, once a certain treshold/critical political mass is acknowledged, one will go the extra mile to spend time and energy exchanging your best. This why I see them as "preferred", despite the inevitable disappointments.
maybe so
Hurt and disappointment, those are the risks that come with any relationship, either romantic ones or between friends. In either case, two standard essentials are respect and trust. Personally, I'd say that respect edges out trust on the scale of things, because it's presence in a meaningful sense lessens the need to dwell on matters of trust, it recedes into the background as a concern when respect comes into the foreground. In a respectful relationship, among friends or between romantic interests, people become attuned to the ways in which words and actions will bring about hurt and disappointment, and how it may effect the other. The connections provide ample opportunity for growth as people who respect each other learn to reflect on the things that may cause disappointment in the other, the introspection can lead to an awareness of traits, mannerisms, habits, or even beliefs, where there might be room for improvement.
Sometimes, it takes a divorce or two, and perhaps several changes of friends and social circles to find those ingredients.
no good. didn't get a wink of sleep last night. way too much energy.
better move me back to the intro forum.
thx.
[chuckle]
well, i might as well post these reflections here and critique myself.
ok, sometimes i joke, as noted elsewhere, and i'll say that i've seen some others' posts at babble, which can be unhelpful too, because outside of context which includes a sense of 'where people are at' at any given time, people can get ticked off, people who we need onside to actualize the massive shifts necessary in the current economic/ecological crises.
i thought of calling these reflections, 'eco-nomics and urban/rural identities/occupations'.
the prime distinction is somewhat reflected in some of the responses to the OP above; there is a tendency to denegrade social conservative lifestyles at babble.
unfortunately, this approach probably entrenches east/west and urban/rural splits in the country.
why?
because farmers and farm families have work which is very specific to geography, soil, weather, precipitation, and micro-ecologies of the areas they farm. this is a complex and integrated knowledge which cannot be easily transported to another region or location. farming lends itself to permanence.
other types of jobs are more transferable, geographically.
to sustain oneself as a teacher, a construction or factory worker etc., one can practice ones' trade almost anywhere there are people.
farming ends itself to continuity, to commitment to the land and long-term physical presence. it is easiest and most efficient when there are committed long-term relationships between people who grow into the work in the very specific context of an area of land, over generations.
there is a sense that promotion of transient relationships/liberal social lifestyles acutally can undercut the efficiency and production of agricultural operations and communities. it's not just a matter of 'liberating' uptight social conservatives.
i'm not talking here about issues of human rights and equality. social conservatives cannot deny others their rights but at the same time social liberals cannot force others to adopt their beliefs and behaviours either.
at this time in our country, its important to encourage understandings of the economic bases which underlie the difficulties urban and rural people are experiencing, rather than dwell on particular bents/divisions. we need to understand and accept differences in the social realm. then at least some bridges can be built. otherwise people whom we very much need to communicate with get turned off by too many differences and retrench in old ghettoized groupings. the process of debate can be polarizing too.
it's important to acknowledge elements of support as well as challenge in exchanges. then we may begin to see useful shifts instead of reactionary Politics.
**
i'm heading off to town for a bit, have to pick up some pyrethrum and rotenone (both botanicals). major earwig hatching. i've tried everything else. even after surrounding the cabbages with wood ashes, the little beggars found the odd piece of mulch to walk up to their dinner. i think what happened is i forgot that i planted mizuna in the same place last year (last year's garden was rather ad hoc). after 'covering the soil', the next important rule of organic gardening is 'crop rotation'. oh well.
[from an Oxford Dictionary- 1976, mind you]
"debate: dispute about,discuss, hold formal argument, contest"
"communicate: impart, transmit, have social dealings with, succeed in conveying information"