I had a dream that I kept waking from and coming back to – or at least I felt like I kept coming back to. I was involved with someone. I couldn’t picture her, so it wasn’t anyone specific. She wanted to have cosmetic surgery (not corrective, per se) and I was stuck between wanting to be supportive and this larger sense of sadness that the world makes people feel as though they are not enough. I had to admit to myself, that part of what I was sad about is that the decision felt, in some ways, a rejection of my feelings towards this person. I thought she was beautiful the way she was… why wasn’t that enough? This is, of course, a selfish way to view these things. We are selfish beings and uncomfortable with change. Was my dream-state position unreasonable? How close is it to how I might really feel? Is this really just an expression of fear? “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Eventually, his family rejects him and stops caring for him… I know three women who underwent a pretty radical change – all three had elected for gastric bypass surgery. None of their marriages survived the change – all three women left their husbands within a year of the surgery. I don’t know the particulars and I don’t want to position the men as victims – what I know is that they couldn’t negotiate the differences. Change, though inevitable, is difficult to navigate – especially when it involves other people.
The other night, the same night as the dream, I went over to the bar near my neighborhood to grab a beer and chicken cheese steak. I sat next to a guy who also lives in the neighborhood. We had never met before. We talked on and off, and debated a bit. The debates were more about me being challenging than any real disagreements. In fact we seemed to agree on most things. He noticed my “so it goes” tattoo and said he dated a woman who had the phrase tattooed on her wrist – and also the asterisk/asshole. She was a libertarian. I wanted to ask if he was sure she wasn’t a librarian? He used the mention of her politics to head down the path of people should be free to do what they want and live how they want. I added the qualifier, so long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. He started talking about how men (or anyone) shouldn’t be passing laws about abortion – personal choice. I didn’t, and don’t, disagree with him, but found myself taking up the “other side’s” case anyway. I found myself making the argument that if some believe that this is about salvation and heaven and saving both the individual and the child from eternal damnation – perhaps we should acknowledge that they are only following through on the way they believe the world should operate? Don’t we all have some sense of a world view that we either try to impose, or at least influence into being? I have to imagine that for some of those in opposition to abortion, they feel an absolutist moral imperative. Again, I don’t agree with any of that, but I found myself pushing for some sense of understanding, some attempt to see where they’re coming from.
I don’t doubt that the debate was the seed for the dream…. and after waking in the morning (and writing a bit here), the dream and debate got me to thinking about the potential father. If we can assume that somewhere there exists a situation in which the woman wants an abortion and the man, perhaps a loving and caring potential father, wants the child, how hard will those conversations be? Do they need to talk about it? Should he have a say? I can make a lot of arguments for why his voice shouldn’t matter – her body, her decision… but something still feels off about the potential for such a major disconnect.
A frequent refrain in my conversation with my neighbor was this desire to live in a world of “we not me.” He said it more often than I did. We both want to see a kinder world in which people take care of each other, in which people consider each other. We talked about living judgment-free, and I pointed out that even in assuming someone is being selfish (not living for something larger than the self) we are making assumptions and passing judgment. Why is it so hard to just be… and let other’s be? To this I could only suggest living life in such a way that others might emulate. Model the behaviors you wish to see in the world and in your relationships.
The other week I read a post on twitter in which someone was sharing their mixed feelings about their wife having decided to transition to a man. They were as supportive as they could be and they were extremely happy to see their partner be the person they felt they were… but the writer also missed having their wife. They like the term wife, they like their wife’s old name, they missed this other person to whom they were married. Again, I can’t imagine the complexity of those feelings – the happiness for the other mixed with the sadness for the self.
So what happens when the “we” and “me” seem irreconcilable? I wrote a long post the other day, “Speak to Me Wild and Precious” in which I was thinking about the life of a poet (or artist or any human being). A life that may have competing needs: solitude and stimulation – the self and the partnership or the self and society. Personally experiencing this dichotomy these past few years has been an area of growth (and challenge) for me. In that post, I also wrote about how I was projecting the poet Mary Oliver on to my ex or my ex on to the poet Mary Oliver. In listening to Oliver speak, I could see the life my ex might have wanted. I could picture her fierce insistence on her independence and how that might make her happy. My ex once shared with me that when she was little, her brother would tease her and say that she was going to grow up alone and live with just a refrigerator and a bookshelf full of books (he might have mentioned cats). Or that while playing alone as a toddler, she would often respond to her mother’s requests with “I busy.” I don’t know if she’s alone or not, busy or not. I assume she has a fridge and some books… but as I was doing this unintentional thought experiment of projection, I had this sense – something I meant to write in that post – that maybe she’s gotten closer to that life. In listening to Oliver and how she lived her writing life, I imagined my ex finding that type of balance, and I was genuinely happy for her. It wasn’t something that I could give, it wasn’t something that was mine to give.
Which sort of brings me full-circle – or leaves me standing in a field slightly bewildered. What are we to do about the conflicts between self and others? How do we negotiate our autonomy as individuals and our duties/responsibilities as members of something bigger? Why do we believe in our ability to change (sometimes dramatically), yet doubt in other people’s ability to change (despite evidence that it happens all the time)? I never have answers for any of these things. I suppose the exercise of writing it out in a disjointed and rambling blog post is an attempt to remind myself that when these types of conflicts arise, we can always try to find ways to turn towards the other person, to ask questions, and to really try to hear and understand the answers.