Break the bonds of servitude to thyself

Emotion, it’s capable of giving us the strongest senses of happiness, or the most overwhelming depths of sadness and despair. Most of us spend a lifetime trying to control the emotions that drive us, reeling in our anger, or discarding our fears as irrational responses to things, but for some we reach a point of being so in control of our emotions that we lose touch with the very thing that makes us human.

Driven, soulless and incapable of feeling anything even on superficial levels we regard all life with a passing fascination but no appreciation. On the other hand we allow certain emotions to overwhelm us for a myriad of reasons and the impetus’ that are responsible become either infamous or glorified for what they do. Depraved venerations for things so sick or vile that the mind reels at how such a travesty can exist.

But it is a sick world we live in, home to things and people, actions and ideas that can lift or compel us to the highest levels of achievement or bring us to the darkest reaches of the abyss we all hide from within ourselves.  The most jaded among us seem immune to the agony of having our dreams crushed, but then there are those who cling to the innocence of naivety and, either by choice or inability to see anything else, continue to see the world with eyes that color it as something wondrous and beautiful. It is those poor ignorant souls that find enjoyment, contentment, and revel in happiness afforded to only a select few. For far too long, so many of us have toiled in jobs we are unsatisfied with, relationships that have long ago grown stale or unfulfilling, friends that no longer complement us as people and do nothing to help us grow, familial ties that we maintain out of some warped ideation of duty or honor, and lives that hold no sense of intrinsic value.

We wear plastic smiles, sport clothes we dislike, say things we don’t believe or understand, drink or eat things from places we have no stake in, and stare down the barrel of immeasurable scrutiny should we cast off any of these behaviors, and all because group thinking dictates that all of this is good. We start out life as blank slates, clean and pure of all sin and taint but as we grow up and collect one experience after another, the instinct for acceptance coupled with the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure demands that we mold and adapt to what others ask of us, and before we know it, a single compromise has become millions, a mild conceit has degenerated into countless vices, and when we look in the mirror we have no true sense of who stares back at us behind the eyes we see.

They say that the eyes are the gateway to the soul. There’s a measure of skill involved in being able to reading someone’s eyes, to look at a person and see the who they really are. A good sales person can read body language without realizing they are doing it, but someone who can read the eyes knows so much more than what someone will buy. They know hopes, dreams, wants, misery, discontent, joy, happiness, fear, trepidation, passion, remorse, and a slew of other things, but too often lately my penchant for reading people has left me disheartened and disenfranchised with the human race. I look at the people around me, the people I’ve known for years, and I see dying fires of passion. Somehow these people who’ve not necessarily had great lives, but most of them having lived in far better times than I, have become withered soulless husks of what they were. I look at the people, these individuals that I’ve bestowed the title of “Friend” upon, and from their actions, their words, their behavior, and behind their eyes, I see people too consumed by a world that cares nothing for them, too crippled by their petty unfounded fears to connect or relate, and I feel a great deal of sadness for what our world has become.

Someone I held very close once told me that the best thing about me is also the worst. I have an unrivaled passion and that passion is overwhelming to others. But to see so many who have not just less passion, but more often than not, no passion at all is depressing. People so afraid of their emotions, of the things that drive them, compel them, touch them, the very things that remind them they’re alive exist as affront to everything we have the potential to be. A woman trapped in a relationship she’s too afraid to leave, too apprehensive to commit herself to emotionally, indulges in one sacrement after another to convince herself she's happy and committed. But her quiet discord causes her to reach out to someone else, rationalized as nothing more than an attempt to feel alive and contented, she accidentally produces an emotional attachment. The fear of having to admit not only to everyone else but mainly to herself that the relationship she’s in publicly is crafted on empty sentiment becomes so debilitating that she tries to turn off everything she’s feeling and move blindly through life, hoping to never have to face the demons she’s created by living the lie. But try as she might, she remains inexorably bound to the only man she’s ever known capable of touching her heart and her sol (not a typo).

A woman having made the investment in a relationship of everything she has to give, unwaveringly loyal to her love. The impetus for this behavior and blind allegiance stemming from a previous act of betrayal that she works feverishly to atone for and in so doing she trivializes an unexpected dynamic she inadvertently cultivates with someone besides her lover and the connection she shares with this person she sees as dirty, dark, and shameful choosing to ignore the emotions, to refuse acknowledgement in any form of the emotions she feels all in the hope that it will go away. Espousing hopes of platonic contact but each attempt is made little more than drivel and Again she remains a slave to the emotions she believes herself to be in control of.

A woman who finds happiness for the first time in her life and in that moment sees the world for something other the bleak and dreary existence that has encased her for so long in recent memory. It begins as nothing more than mindless rutting, two bodies conjoined at the hips in hopes of finding the next plateau of pleasure and release. Slowly it changes, a fluid dynamic made solid and volatile by the introduction of something too powerful to control, love. A silent acknowledgement made for what she feels, a verbal expression with wanton hope and anxiety behind every word, and the response that is all too devastating to keep her eyes dry. But she tries to remain strong, holding to hope as her life raft, making every second count toward the day when those feelings would be reciprocated. And then the silent death knell of finality as those hope are choked away, but a strong spirit is not so easily killed and love doesn’t die, it consumes and controls, it makes slaves of us all.

A man, too far jaded and embittered with a lifetime or torment, anguish, disappointment, and the burden of having grown up too fast, finds miring in silent pursuits of pure intellect to be the only thing close to fulfilling. Isolated from everyone and everything, he finds emotional solitude to be in his best interest and seeks virtually nothing in the way of connection or attachment. Lost in his thoughts, blinded by the persona he portrays to the world as a means of guarding against the scars that run far too deep, he awakes one day to find that his single minded endeavors have landed him in a position where a bold new world stretches out into the infinite before him. But he tries at first to control the emotions he’s still attempting to identify and process, his entire being having been awoken with the touch of this new creature, this angelic being that suspends a halo with horns. Choosing to embrace the emotions, to revel in them, to experience everything they offer, he foolishly makes decisions that will haunt him long after the glow of the halo has faded. For far too long, immutable misery is colored as just suffering for unrivalled happiness, the textbook mindset of the insane. For every deplorable action there is a logical explanation that requires not so much a leap of logic but a level of analysis that would seem to imply that this man knows more of the woman to whom he’s attached that she knows of herself. The sad part is that it might be true. But he suffers unimaginably, toiling in an agony that can only be described as making hell seem like heaven, and all because the emotions he once pushed away, once ignored and controlled, have returned. Ignited by a passionate fire that burns more brightly and powerfully than the sun, those passions overwhelm and consume him, exerting an inescapable control that refuses to let go and only tightens it’s grip the more ferociously he fights to escape it. He is made a willing slave to his own feelings, forced to balance his love for a woman too confounded by her own emotions to think clearly, and the man’s own ideations of love and affection.

We are all at the whim and mercy of our emotional selves, unable to break loose, get free, or even act outside of our sentimental natures. We fight too savagely to control what we feel and end up being slain by the feelings we combat. None of us is truly ever in command, ever able to truly let go, to escape the haunting feelings that linger long after the apex of tangibility for our emotions has gone. But our ham handed machinations to subdue those ghastly reminders of things felt before, lead us to addiction, to alcohol, to perversions of atonement, to rationalizations too weak to hold up under analysis, and to unyielding subjugation to the part of us that remains unwilling to forget.  To all of you, I posit this challenge; take control of your emotions by being honest about what they are and why you struggle so fiercely to contain them. Catharsis is only an admission away. 

A day late and a dollar sh...wait I have exact change!

So I’m a couple days late with this, but I promise you it will have been worth the wait. For those of you like who were more inclined to pay homage to Singles Awareness Day instead of V-Day, I’m guessing that Sunday was a massive shit storm of the popular media, society, and almost everyone around you (if you went out in public) flaunting how miserable and single you are. As always I’ve prepared a not so conventional analysis of the day, its meanings, customs, and the people who partake in them.

So February 14^th has somehow become synonymous with romance. I should amend that and say that it’s been proselytized as being synonymous with romance. It’s the one day of the year when even the most macho and chauvinistic men on the planet can lower their guard and shower their special lady friend with love and lavish gifts. The singular day of the whole year when love blooms and couples grow closer together, partaking in romantic outings, dining on exquisite meals at fancy places, doting upon one another, sharing in the company of just being a couple…or so the story goes.

From my perspective, the entire holiday is a manufactured pile. It’s the one day of the year when any asshole with a platinum card and five minutes can come across as Don Juan by showing up with flowers and chocolates. I’m sorry to say, but from where I sit, making dinner reservations, having flowers delivered, and having an actual conversation should not require the pretense of a Hallmark holiday. Valentine’s Day is a complete indictment of the decent treatment that guys like me dish out at every turn. It’s a day when the cheesiest and lamest plays in the book become something more than a Hail Mary pass and the women that date these insensitive pricks eat it up wholesale.

I’m sorry, I know the shit works, but it’s cliché. It’s a standard of the holiday and the behavior that you’re supposed to do something nice and romantic. This in itself I have no issue with because I’m all for people exercising an excuse to make a grandiose gesture of love or affection. Hell I use to actively seek them out. I use to relish any opportunity to endear myself further to my love and show just how thoughtful I could be. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that some of you out there feel you’ve got the perfect man. But do me a favor, before you go decrying me for insulting people or things I supposedly know nothing about, ask yourself this question, did you do something with your significant other that you would not or could not have been able to do on any other Sunday of the year?

If the answer is no, then you have no case. And just so we’re clear here discounts, coupons, offers, deals, and bonuses don’t count. My stance is simple, if the guy you’re with is truly a romantic and you as a woman gravitate toward that kind of behavior, then you either need to find someone who does it in different ways every year and just count the days from one V-Day to the next, or find someone who will do it on a whim and in new and exciting ways. You might love the guy you’re with but if he’s an insensitive dick that’s more out of touch with your feelings than Glenn Beck is with reality, odds are your relationship is on life support and you need to start looking for a donor.

The entire ideation of a single day set aside to be a romantic, caring, nurturing, and loving individual is a slap in the face to the men that do it every day. The rationale behind it all is maddening too, because the preconceived idea is that if I a guy goes all out for his lady, makes her feel romantic, loved, tender, cared for, valued, and safe she’ll sleep with him the minute hormones take over. I know at this point most of you women are preparing to argue steadfastly about the men you’re with being worthwhile human beings, but let’s cut the crap and just get to it here. The guy you’re with is, most likely, a shill. He follows the same play book everyone else does. If you don’t believe me, perhaps I can prove it mathematically.

Now I’ll grant you this is really the way it works for men, and woman freely welcome the feelings that these ham handed gestures engender because they actually seek out the treatment. Men and women are wired very differently in that MOST men, equate almost everything to how likely is the action to get them laid, fast cars, big houses, good jobs, alcohol tolerance, flashy clothes, reliable friends, I mean the list goes on, but really if you boil down all of the pretenses and the stories, you begin to find that it’s all really an image that is constructed in a way to make the man seem way more attractive. MOST women, on the other hand, want to feel safe, secure, wanted, coveted, and sexy. Even these very blunt and thoughtless gestures of dinner for two with wine and roses, while very trite and cliché do little, if anything to actually bring two people closer together.

I mean the chocolates are a staple of V-Day and really what purpose do they serve? Most men by this time of year are just starting to feel more amorous toward their women, as the pounds they packed on over the holidays are finally beginning to shed as a result of New Year’s resolutions. In addition, most women are always planning months ahead and have already begun to note the calendar as to when beach season starts and they’re aiming to fit into a bikini one size smaller than they could the year before. Now we add the sex factor. The guy hasn’t had any good tail in months, the Super Bowl is over, his lady is losing pounds, and he thinks he just might be in the mood for an all night cram session, with a little help from some blue pills mind you. So he takes it upon himself to anything and everything he can to make his lady feel as horned up and wanton as possible.

The tried and true staples of the holiday come out with full force. Chocolates for their euphoric effects (dollar says most of you didn’t know they did that), flowers with a shallow message about love or beauty and making abstract comparisons to her, and then a dinner at a restaurant with a sweet deal for two people, an open table in the right time slot, and just close enough to your place where you can be a couple glasses of wine to the wind before the night’s festivities begin. All completely unoriginal, and sadly, almost guaranteed to work.

Well the morning after it goes back to business as usual. The guy wants to be woken up via blowjob, his lady is expecting him to remain a sweet caring guy, and by 9AM they’ve come to the realization that she is neither a sex kitten, nor is he the Casanova she took him to be. So my question is, why go through all the trouble of putting on the song and dance if nothing changes. If a relationship is stale, it’s stale. Gifts, dinners, and even the most romantic gestures of jewelry, horse drawn carriage rides, walks in the surf of the beach, and even moonlight poetry all come down to useless actions with little meaning behind them, if they’re only done because of the holiday. It’s like making it a point to contact lost friends around the holiday season, it doesn’t mean anything if you’re only doing it because of the holiday.

Amid riding out the obligations and imposed expectations of the holiday, most couples are no better for it, and that is what is truly sad, it’s like wedding anniversaries. They don’t mean dick unless the things you’re doing to honor them are bigger than anything you could do on any other given day. Taking her to dinner is one thing for V-Day or anniversary, but pick a random Wednesday, send a limo to her office with a dress she mentioned she liked and shoes to match (don’t be afraid to get her friends in on it for sizing and style help, trust me they’ll jump at it) and take her to a romantic dinner, followed by a beach trip or a carriage ride and instead of going home to have sex just spend the night holding each other. To most men it might sound gay but let me tell you that this kind of thing, being done with no outside impetus aside from just general want, is the quickest way in the world to not only bond very deeply with the woman you profess to love, but also to break yourself of the habit of behavior where every action is intended to lead to sex.  

The best laid plans...

It seems there was more truth in the admonitions and warnings espoused by our forebears than any of us would have like to acknowledge or admit. For twelve years of our lives, during one of the most influential periods of our lives, we sit in crowded classrooms and toil in near faceless anonymity completing one assignment after the next on the belief that somehow that knowledge will serve us in our future. The irony is that the workload is despised but the youth and the revelry shared with our peers is the only thing making it bearable. We endure harsh words, humiliation, and the angst of adolescence with a grin because we know we are not alone in our tribulations.

But somewhere along the way something happens. We sacrifice something to gain something else. We give up a social life to focus on studies in the hopes of accessing a top shelf college and giving us a leg up on our peers. Others relegate their scholastic pursuits to a trunk bound cargo and instead relish every visceral moment of their young teens with a ferocious intensity.

Regardless of which path is chosen, there is one thing that remains a constant for every person, the want for it to all be over. A fervent wish to be done with the dramas, workloads, expectations, droning of teachers, and mindless reinforcement exercises that consume the years of our scholastic careers is the driving force behind our need to be done with it all. Summers cut short give way to autumn days that are far too hot and attention spans barely capable of receiving information let alone assimilating it. But everyday we endure brings us closer to the bright lights of our futures.

During those days we have a feeling of invincibility. Drinking before our time, indulging in drug use and rationalizing that we’ve got a life time to kick the habit or resolve the ill effects, staying out past curfew, lying to authority, defying any kind of established order, adopting promiscuous habits, and a myriad of other forms of rebellion form the hallmarks of our behavior. We seek out an identity crafted from experience and action, all of it, serving to define us.

All too soon though, we find the days of high school fading away and the years take a toll not previously felt. We have no more summers of care free fun and adventure, the promiscuous habits of before give way to pregnancy or disease, relationships get serious or end, friends drift away, college plans are dashed to the ground or bear fruit from years of labor, and an entire world we thought full of possibility and opportunity comes crashing in with almost none of its previous grandeur. Good grades mean little in the grand scheme, a scoreboard of who had the most boyfriends or girlfriends is deemed repugnant, and a litany of yearbook well wishing comes down to obligatory sentiment with very little meaning.

Despite all of the somber repercussions we press on, hopeful that the bleakness of impending debt from student loans, a life of responsibility we’re just not ready for, and a loss of our social standing within a dynamic that didn’t really matter much to begin with, is less traumatizing than it actually seems. We carry on, hoping to blend into the herd and follow blindly in the footsteps of those who’ve gone before us, praying that the road is littered with fewer broken dreams that the trailblazers ahead of us.

And the fulcrum upon which we turn is our continued associations with those that made the trek with us. We call them friend, share all of our lives with them, depend and rely on them for support and camaraderie, but really most of us remain far too guarded and closed off to connect on any real or serious level. But the delusion is a welcome respite from the truth that most of us made the journey alone.

So the question to all of this is, do we really ever make friends? Do any of us truly find someone to come with us on our journey of life? We swap out people we claim are our best friends for life partners and the whole dynamic breaks down when we realize that we’ve never been fulfilled. Perhaps we need to take a second and really evaluate what keeps us bound to the people we call friend. I say take a piece of paper and list five unique attributes that apply to the people closest to you that you admire in them. Not qualities like, “He’s nice” or “She’s sweet” everybody embodies those things to a degree, I want you all to really take a good hard look at the people closest to you and determine, perhaps for the first time, why you allow them to be so close.