Thoughts on Family (and the Biggest Loser)
I need to empty myself out, and myspace is not the place or format to do that. Yes, I will probably post a link to this site on myspace, but I feel the need to separate myself from that scene for more instense thinking.
Tonight, on my myspace blog, I posted about the need for a family, the need to feel unconditional love from someone other than myself (because, of course, we are all experts at loving ourselves). I posted about how lonely I was watching a horrible reality TV show, wishing I had someone to cry about missing. I guess that wasn't exactly right, I cry about missing plenty of people. I could better put it by saying that I wished I had someone who I had the right to miss, which is another thing altogether. Plenty of us have had silent crushes on friends and strangers alike, but that feeling of love or any strong emotion is hardly justified when considering their (the object's) ignorance of it. Most of us have probably been the subject of said crushes and we hardly give a thought to it.
Are you so ugly that no one could crush on you? Trust me, that is not possible. Even the most undesirable of us have been loved and longed for by someone, of the opposite sex or our own.
We may not have known about it, and maybe that is why some of us find it so unthinkable, but the law of averages certainly indicates that we have been desired by someone at sometime.
But I digress. The point of this discussion (and I hope that this is indeed a discussion, and not a one-way conversation with myself) is that tonight I wished I had a family. Or at least someone who loved me and I loved in return.
I have been married before (see, even the most unloveable can achieve love). I walked down an aisle, I exchanged rings, I moved in with a woman. Then I watched it all, in turn, fall apart in my hands. I feel no need to discuss blame (at this time), but the end result was the same, regardless. So I did have a family for a moment. My wife and I were a family unit, with (at the least in theory) the potential to produce children and live lives happily united. Again, the point of this blog is not to discuss my failed marriage, but rather to focus on the need for love and family (which, in my mind, should be the embodiment of said love).
So how can someone, as myself, who failed so desperately in my one attempt at family, still wish for that thing which I do not have? Is it that aspect of human nature that Dostoevsky spoke of in Notes from Underground? The desire for choice (and wish) even if that thing is self-destructive? Wanting what I really shouldn't have? Maybe that is off the point, but name dropping Dostoevsky is always helpful is establishing one's credentials as an existentialist and, furthermore, as an intellectual.
I don't know what it is in all of us that drives us to want the family unit. I don't know if it is the desire to reproduce (stable environment = chance for offspring), the need to fit in with everyone else (though the world around us shows that families are fucking falling apart left and right. 50% divorce rate and such), the desire to achieve the essence of what a man or woman is supposed to achieve in life (wait, I thought was existential, fuck that!), or is it something else? Has society stained us so deeply that we cannot shake it? Does it touch every aspect of our goals and wishes, to the point that we don't really have a choice, but rather only a desire to fulfill our society's measures of success?
I guess the point of all this is to say that I don't know what it is that makes me cry when I watch TV and see families. I don't know what makes me wish to be 5 again and look at my parents hugging in the kitchen. I don't know why I look into a woman's eyes and wish that she wore my ring on her finger. But I do it anyway.
Tonight, on my myspace blog, I posted about the need for a family, the need to feel unconditional love from someone other than myself (because, of course, we are all experts at loving ourselves). I posted about how lonely I was watching a horrible reality TV show, wishing I had someone to cry about missing. I guess that wasn't exactly right, I cry about missing plenty of people. I could better put it by saying that I wished I had someone who I had the right to miss, which is another thing altogether. Plenty of us have had silent crushes on friends and strangers alike, but that feeling of love or any strong emotion is hardly justified when considering their (the object's) ignorance of it. Most of us have probably been the subject of said crushes and we hardly give a thought to it.
Are you so ugly that no one could crush on you? Trust me, that is not possible. Even the most undesirable of us have been loved and longed for by someone, of the opposite sex or our own.
We may not have known about it, and maybe that is why some of us find it so unthinkable, but the law of averages certainly indicates that we have been desired by someone at sometime.
But I digress. The point of this discussion (and I hope that this is indeed a discussion, and not a one-way conversation with myself) is that tonight I wished I had a family. Or at least someone who loved me and I loved in return.
I have been married before (see, even the most unloveable can achieve love). I walked down an aisle, I exchanged rings, I moved in with a woman. Then I watched it all, in turn, fall apart in my hands. I feel no need to discuss blame (at this time), but the end result was the same, regardless. So I did have a family for a moment. My wife and I were a family unit, with (at the least in theory) the potential to produce children and live lives happily united. Again, the point of this blog is not to discuss my failed marriage, but rather to focus on the need for love and family (which, in my mind, should be the embodiment of said love).
So how can someone, as myself, who failed so desperately in my one attempt at family, still wish for that thing which I do not have? Is it that aspect of human nature that Dostoevsky spoke of in Notes from Underground? The desire for choice (and wish) even if that thing is self-destructive? Wanting what I really shouldn't have? Maybe that is off the point, but name dropping Dostoevsky is always helpful is establishing one's credentials as an existentialist and, furthermore, as an intellectual.
I don't know what it is in all of us that drives us to want the family unit. I don't know if it is the desire to reproduce (stable environment = chance for offspring), the need to fit in with everyone else (though the world around us shows that families are fucking falling apart left and right. 50% divorce rate and such), the desire to achieve the essence of what a man or woman is supposed to achieve in life (wait, I thought was existential, fuck that!), or is it something else? Has society stained us so deeply that we cannot shake it? Does it touch every aspect of our goals and wishes, to the point that we don't really have a choice, but rather only a desire to fulfill our society's measures of success?
I guess the point of all this is to say that I don't know what it is that makes me cry when I watch TV and see families. I don't know what makes me wish to be 5 again and look at my parents hugging in the kitchen. I don't know why I look into a woman's eyes and wish that she wore my ring on her finger. But I do it anyway.
you gotta pick out the folks you love and love the hell outa them!
"a right" to be feeling something? right isn't something that factors in when it comes to emotions. you feel what you feel. right DOES figure in when you're talking about acting on them.
i wonder if your lady love will be happy in her choice. if not, i hope she gathers the courage to bail out. she's teaching her kids it's okay to live a loveless marriage, and kids aren't happy people growing up in a household filled with tension. trust me on that one! we're all scared to make a huge, life-changing leap, but dammit woman, NOTHING CHANGES UNLESS YOU DO!
you, too, dan. only i love you.
Posted by
Anonymous |
10:13 AM
I think that it was the Doobie Brothers, who through some retarded bird imagery ("the eagle flies with the dove"), suggested that we, "if you can't be with the one you love, (honey), love the one you're with". Which, actually, is probably a song about infidelity.
Posted by
rwmonty |
9:57 PM