Insistent disappointment is surrender to disempowerment. The most familiar form for many of us is complaining. We complain about the things we believe we can’t effect. We won’t acknowledge that this kind of remonstration is a camouflaged form of entitlement; an entitlement wrapped up in outraged ‘shoulds’ birthed in early wounds.
Our outraged ‘shoulds’ often silently shout: I’m not getting what I need! I surrender pursuing what I want to be entitled to what I need – without which I am injured or maybe die … and it’s on you! Whoever ‘you’ are.
If I want something, I have to reach for it. If I need something, you have to give it to me or get it for me. Whoever you are … god or man.
You didn’t give to me! You took away from me! You abandoned me in my need!
You owe me. Whoever you are … god or man.
Are we confused about the nature of our dependence upon each other? Like worms on a fishhook, we are caught within a dilemma: my needs and wants vs. yours … selfish vs. selfless. Are relationships with each other a dance to the music of guilt or blame? A Sartrean ‘Hell is other people’? Loneliness or capture: it’s a setup for complaint.
Such insistence is the voice of disempowerment – avoidance and denial of an awe-full dependence we all share equally.
And what is this shared dependence – if not just for each other? Is there something more reliable … but found only between us and only together?
Perhaps we evade apprehending what fundamentally sustains us and how we participate in it?
The oft-offered answer is: love.
But what is that – if not about our needs or wants?
***
זה מה?!!
frozen fictions
fallen
still born
what mother of locked desire
what father of outworn fables
drops these suffocated
un-begotten?
where is the lost word
found?
only in the cracks?
only in love
breaker of hearts?
what is that?!
if you know
you cannot say
there is a mother of desire
before she was born
there is a father
with untold stories of yearning
where?
if you know
you cannot show
only in the fall
not the grasp
love?
What is that?!!
June 27, 2017
© 2017 James Donnelly, DSW.LCSW
All rights reserved
South Garden Press, New York
For thoughts and comments, please e mail to: jdonnellydsw@gmail.com