Boom, Baby!
I’ve been annoyed with myself over the past few days. Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Maybe I should have been all easy with myself and inwardly nurturing and all of that healthy therapeutic palaver. On the other hand, I was a bit fed up with getting knocked on my ass by unexpected emotional hammers. Then there’s my tendency to fall into the old “coincidence = causality” trap. I know that it doesn’t. Really. Nonetheless, I’ll pick myself up off the floor and look around with a “Guh?” expression on my face while thinking, Guess I had too much decaf. Or, Really need to get back to the gym. That’s a consequence of my overly materialist attitude towards my state of mind. If it all reduces to the neurochemical soup, then it makes sense to seek out the chemical cause of a blindsiding partial meltdown: two big mugs of decaf is still too much caffeine for my sensitive noggin. Not enough exercise reduces the levels of happy brain juice. Or maybe the planets aren’t properly aligned.
There was quite an alignment last night, as I paced around the parking lot smoking a cigarette I wasn’t enjoying. Bright white Venus, a thumbnail moon, and two other planets I couldn’t identify, all in an aesthetically pleasing line canted at about a 30 degree angle from the horizon. Like a celestial bat swinging at my skull.
When you’re popping a bunch of officially licensed pharmaceuticals designed to tweak your head, it’s a bit difficult to avoid the reductionist model of emotional turmoil. After all, the pills’ theoretical efficacy is built on that very structure, and it seems odd to color outside the lines. But I know that’s exactly what I need to do: color outside the lines, off the page, onto the floor, up the wall and all over the goddamn ceiling.
Hey, sweetheart, he said to himself. You’ve gone through some seriously weighty emotional experiences over the past year or so, and you’ve arrived at some conclusions about who you are, and what’s important to you. Bearing that in mind, you might want to think about looking at the obvious and immediate cause here, rather than the derivative and theoretical ones.
The point I’m circling and poking cautiously with a stick is that there’s only so much reductionism a guy can take before he becomes an assemblage of carbon and dihydrogen monoxide stumbling randomly through time and space at the whim of its own chemistry, devoid of free will and intention.
I wrote awhile back about the “holy trinity” of qualities I believe are requirements for an intimate relationship, polyamorous or otherwise: self-knowledge, integrity, and honesty. I’ve written a fair amount about the first one (because, you know, I am just so self-aware I can’t stands meself), but I haven’t explicitly dealt with the other two. So, if you’re interested—and even if you’re not—I’m going to do that now.
First, to summarize, self-knowledge is the foundation, the keystone, or any other structurally significant metaphor you care to choose. I need to know what’s important to me about myself and why it’s important. I need to know what my hard rules are: standards for my own thought and action that I will not compromise, for anyone or anything, as well as the standards of thought and action that I'm willing to accept from others. I need to know what my desires are, and what truly motivates those desires at the most fundamental of levels.
From that follows integrity. Not only does this indicate rigorous adherence to the ethical principles realized through self-knowledge, it also means being whole and complete as an individual.
Finally, there is honesty. Honesty is the outward-facing manifestation of the integrity that is built upon self-knowledge. What a person defines as honesty will depend on what they know about themselves, which means that a person who is somewhat lacking in the self-awareness department will not have the same standards of honesty as someone who isn’t. Fortunately, it also means that time and experience can change those standards, hopefully for the better. For me, honesty within relationships simply means telling the truth about my thoughts, my emotions, and my intentions, without fail.
I know from bitter experience that if the first principle is not a central tenet of my life, the second and third are unobtainable. As a practice, working within this trinity requires constant re-evaluation to make sure that all three principles are informed by each other and are, in fact, being observed. Which doesn’t mean that I’m a paragon of virtue—far from it. But it’s only as a consequence of failure that I’ve gained even the slightest hope of figuring any of this out.
Here’s one set of such consequences (and it's by no means the only or most important set I've got in my file cabinet of failure): a lack of self-knowledge, a blind spot, can mean that I might want something without knowing precisely why I want it. This is, I think, especially true in intimate relationships, which are fertile grounds for fear and self-deception. For example, charging hard after exclusivity and commitment in order to quell the fear of loss or loneliness causes all manner of quirky and downright unappealing behavior. Without self-knowledge, there is no check on my desire or my behavior because there can be no integrity: nebulous ethical principles offer no corrective, and a sense of being incomplete only adds neurotic fuel to the grasping fire. Finally, in the midst of such confusing internal turmoil, there is no possible way for me to be honest and forthright about what I’m thinking and feeling, particularly regarding my intentions.
So what does all this have to do with unexpected emotional hammers, planetary alignments, and crayons?
Simply this: I’ve discovered that if I don’t adhere to these principles, I go crazy. Which is unfortunate, because I wasn't aware of them for most of my life, except as vaguely-formed abstractions.
However, as causes of crazy go, this isn't such a bad one. If I’m willing to do the work, it puts more control of the contents of my skull back in my own hands. As far as the contents of my heart…well, I’ll just say this: it’s possible that I might not need to be benched for long. I might need to get off the bench, hike across town, and play in an entirely different ballpark.
And that’s about as specific as I'm willing to get right now, and as far as I’m willing to take a baseball metaphor.
