On loving to be alone

I thought I would write while I cool off from my walk before I hop in the shower.

I like to walk for exercise. I walk as fast as I possibly can without breaking out into a jog for about an hour each night. It's the only form of exercise I've ever actually enjoyed enough to be able to stick with it, so I figure – go with what works.

It rained today and everything thing was fresh, wet and clean. I loved the way the lights from the houses, passing cars and streetlights reflected in the puddles everywhere. The dirt and smog in the air was washed away and I could actually smell the grass and leaves.  I like to think that they smell like the color green.  The world was so soaked that everything I heard SOUNDED wet, if that makes sense.

I don't know how to explain how I felt. I kind of went off into a little trance and things seemed clear to me. My mind is such a muddled mess sometimes, but the place I went to was quiet and there was nothing there. It was just empty and I was able to get some good thinking done. It made me happy.

I was reading today about being alone, and how it's good to be alone. People are afraid of being alone but why? I guess there's different reasons. One one hand we are egotistical. We want to be acknowledged by other people. We want them to see the things we do and approve of them. We want to see other people do things that we disapprove of so that we can judge them, further feeding our ego. I think that we feed off each others misery, and we are so blind to how unhappy we are that we don't realize it.

On the other hand we want to be with other people because we want to be loved. Everyone needs love. What is love though? I love my wife, but if I saw her laughing and flirting with another man I would become angry and jealous. But why? If I love her so much, why would I get angry that she was having a pleasurable experience? Don't I want her to be happy?

And that's a part of the problem with love, at least the sort of love that I've been taught about. I hold my wife in my arms and we say to each other, “You are mine, I am yours.” But is love possessive? Is it right to make someone your emotional property? If you think someone belongs to you then it's no wonder that you get upset if it behaves in a way that you don't like.

Love is not a toaster! One day the toaster starts burning your bread. WTF toaster! All this time you've been making my toast just the way I like it and now you burn it every time. You can take the toaster in for repairs, but when a person changes you can't take them into the shop. Otherwise I think my wife would have taken me in from a complete overhaul a long time ago.

I guess what I'm trying to get at in my typical cryptic fashion is that to truly love other people, maybe you need to also be able to love being alone. Then, if you love being alone, you can love others with out any fear, anger, jealousy, envy, or any of those other hangups that doom so many “relationships” to failure. Love is freedom and freedom is love.

Sorry, no bigender content, but maybe next time I'll write about my secret longing to be a housewife.