PINNACLE OF POIGNANCY

Milan Kundera is one of the most insightful authors of the 21st century. Growing up in Czechoslovakia under communist rule, his works reflect the great struggles and triumphs under an irrational regime. I wanted to reproduce a selection from Kundera's seminal work: The Unbearable Lightness of Being:

“There’s no particular merit in being nice to one’s fellow man. Tereza had to treat all the other villagers decently because otherwise she couldn’t live there. Even with Tomas (her partner), she was obliged to behave lovingly because she needed him. We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotion- love, antipathy, charity, or malice--- and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals. 

 True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to form only when its recipient has no power. 

Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals… It is a completely selfish love: Tereza didn’t want anything out of her dog Karenin; she did not ever ask him to love her back. Nor had she ever asked herself the questions that plague human couples: Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearned to be loved, that is, we demand something (love) for our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company. Furthermore, Tereza accepted Karenin for what she was; she did not try to make him over in her image. No one can give anyone the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise.

So maybe the answer lies in just treating everyone like dogs in the best possible way, to not be plagued by all these human questions and love unconditionally because it is done out of desire that does not ask for reciprocation.

Cheers

The perfect Sheath for your Relationship Teeth

A clean refreshing relationship reminds me of brushing my teeth. There’s no better feeling than sliding your tongue over spotless pearly whites, bastions of trust, respect, responsibility and awesomeness. There’s many more teeth to be brushed in our relations but these are the foundations. Trust is an obvious one, and it can be demonstrated by non-threatening behavior and an authentic comfort with the other. Trust deeply relates to sharing vulnerabilities because knowing eachother’s weak points can make us softer and more considerate. Vulnerability derives from the latin “Vulnus” which means “to wound.” If you know what hurts her, then hopefully there’s greater compassion to avoid reopening the wound. Yet the underlying problem is when we rip the scab off anyway and use the sensitive issues of the other as ammunition to hit below the belt. This plaque only strip the enamel off our teeth. Respect- from listening non-judgmentally to being emotionally available and affirming is key. Responsibility for self and for the priorities of the other- acknowledging past wrongs and admitting when one is wrong are equally pertinent. Finally, awesomeness – what are those sparks that make your spine tingle and eyes alight with excitement? Seek the intriguing adventurous paths.

It cannot be underestimated how we must remember to make a persistent effort everyday keep our teeth healthy, to listen … to really listen to what our partner is saying and how they feel, just like we must remember to brush after every meal.

Sometimes we do a careless job of brushing only the front and bottom teeth, neglecting the hard to reach molars in the back. It takes more effort to reach these teeth but it is just as important to brush them and even more rewarding. These are the subtleties of romance, knowing just what to say and when to say it, the spontaneity of bringing home her favorite meal and especially being less clueless to her state of mind. Just as we must floss after a particularly big meal that leaves corn or beef in between our teeth, difficulties with respect or trust for example, its crucial to talk through them ASAP before the plaque eats through enamel, the outer coating of the tooth.  It really is the “little things,” those times we shirk brushing, that can tear a relationship apart.

 For example, a minor dispute such as a wife disliking the fact that her husband chews with his mouth open can fester if she does not tell him. Likewise, He might dislike that she gossips to him about her friends. An amalgam of miniature problems such as these go untalked about because they are considered minor-things each spouse thinks they can tolerate. But this plaque can lead to emotional gingivitis where the build up grows exponentially and becomes intolerable.

Some fights for example start over a stupid issue and then the little things get brought up in a hostile environment and exacerbate the situation. Communication and understanding are the toothpaste and floss that remove the plaque of problems from our teeth. The sooner the toothpaste is used, the sooner the couple talks about a particular problem and the relationship gets stronger, just as the tooth heals. The major fights destroy not only enamel but rot the pulp of the tooth. Getting false teeth is expensive and painful, just like divorce.

After a root canal, one’s mouth never feels the same. The wife who didn’t like her husband chewing with his mouth open might bring this to his attention during an argument on an unrelated subject such as not having enough money for the electric bill, causing the dam to burst and both partners to unleash a slew of insults at each other. He goes down stairs to sleep on the couch and they both begin to think why they thought they loved each other in the first place.  Fights that never get resolved cause many facets (teeth) of a relationship to fall apart (fall out) from root canals. Before you know it. Love is a great mouthwash to cover all the nooks and crannies your toothbrush missed. Affection and compassion can always forgive miscommunication here and there.

Life, Love, Death: Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

             We are bombs with infinite fuses for creation, destruction and preservation, constant human explosions emitting our essence into people, places and thing, destined to impact the landscape of world consciousness. The field of combat is littered with the carrion of cognitive dissonances as well as the blossoming flowers of authentic being. Sometimes we let our inauthentic ego get the best of us and target others instead of our own underlying suffering , or let delusive ideology be a B-52 that discharges our steely hot anger and frustration on innocent parties. So what good upstanding bombs would we be if we did not examine our own wiring? Can we really choose what sets us off?, when and how we detonate and what is worth detonating for? Or is the myopia of a zenophobic, jingoistic, androcentric, and most frighteningly a-spiritual world enough to force us into a blissful ignorance of non-consideration and misplaced empathy?

            Our life was detonated at the moment of conception, it has already happened and the energy within us is going to leave that bomb one day, death it is going to happen – it is a certainty. It is far from morose to acknowledge that birth marks the first step taken into the grave. The day you were pressed into existence, half the journey is already complete; the remaining half will take a little time... or a little more, before the last fuse is lit. With life, death has also penetrated you: Now only one thing remains that you can do, something that depends on you, and that is love, to love the bomb you are, and the wiring you have the potential to alter to become the most compassionate, wise dazzling being possible.

 And because discovery love depends on you, and which fuses you decide to light, there is every possibility you may miss lighting the most sublime fuses we inherently possess.

That is the agony of love: YOU CAN MISS IT. If you don't do something, if you don't become alert, IF YOU DON'T CONSCIOUSLY & DELIBERATELY MOVE TOWARDS LIGHTING YOUR OWN LAMP OF AWESOMENESS YOU MAY MISS YOUR CHANCE, 

There is every possibility that you may not be able to trigger your character, your novel existence. Hence the fear, the trembling, the anguish and anxiety about whether “you” will be about to make “it.” Yet, the trepidations imprinted on us by those who wire us do not have to define us to the extent we have left them.

Our wiring says, "Will I be able to move into love?" "Will I be able to flow into love?" But side by side with this agony, there is an ecstasy -- that one is free. This freedom, this transcendent, indescribable way of approaching all phenomena is open to everyone yet squandered through the craving of ignorance, greed and hatred on personal, state and international levels. In this anarchic world directed by the success of the powerful elites, your personal narrative, characterized by a yearning for freedom counter to the separateness of fear, is the key, the tool, to understanding the potential for efficacy you possess is much greater than what society has told you it possible.

Hope is when you stop worrying about the bomb others want you to be and love the bomb you are, desiring to manifest aesthetic excellence and be the self-fulfilling prophecy towards that end. As Henly wrote prophetically, 

“I am the Master of my Fate, I am the Captain of my Soul.”

          Embrace the boundlessness of self-determinant agency and explode in the myriad multivalent directions devoid of fear. For it is fear that compromises our wiring most of all to separate us from love. Yet, our bomb cannot even activate without fear, which exists because of freedom. Mastery of freedom, precision and discrimination of our wiring restructures our minds for total ecstasy sans anxiety and makes the journey worth sailing skillfully.

If love was also predestined, as life and death are, then there would have been no fear, but then there would have been no ecstasy either -- because ECSTASY IS POSSIBLE ONLY WHEN YOU ACHIEVE SOMETHING, when consciously you choose something, when deliberately you arrive somewhere, when it is YOUR journey and you are not being dragged. That's the beauty of love and that's the danger too,

The time is now to detonate, you bright bombs of breathtaking ebullient bliss!