Filed under: Philosophy of the Person
“I was texting with my ex-boyfriend married guy and he asked me who is he to me now. I told him, someone I love and care about but I have to be discreet because he is married and I have a boyfriend. Then I asked him who am I to him now. He said I will be the only one outside his family to get his ashes when he dies. It made me cry. I think he is the love that I am looking for but unfortunately we did not meet at the right time.”
- A friend’s short message
The appropriate line for the two of you would be ‘We had the right love at the wrong time.’ Reading your short message left me speechless. I guess that is one of the most sad and painful messages I have ever read in quite some time, aside from the ones I have been receiving from Mister Penguin lately… but let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about you.
Whattatiming, my friend. I have been reading Nietzsche lately, and I realized that the greatest blunder we have done to the human soul is to have conditioned that soul to act as if it were a ‘part’ of something larger than itself—to act for the family, the community, the nation, the world—we have thereby instructed the human soul to commit suicide, to annihilate its individuality in favor of the common good. In the real world, there are only individuals. The world may mock us for fighting for our soul because the world has set its principles against us, but what is essential is that we heed the call of our soul, not anyone else’s because we only have one soul and our obligation is to nourish it and set it free.
There are zillions of people in this planet suffering from the same bout as the two of you are going through. We have different reasons for choosing what we want to do. Some choose not to fight for what they want, and if that is the case it just means that the passion is not that strong and being not that strong enough, it is right not to fight for it. Some choose to go for what they want, only to realize later on that they should not have. This happens when fools rush in. Most of the male of the species go through a sort of polygamous stage at least once in their lifetimes, especially when they are thirty-something to forty-something. Most of the males would even think that they are indeed in love and would move heaven and earth for that pseudo-love thing, oblivious to the fact psychological statistics presents, and they rush into things, regretting what they have done as they near the dusk of their lives when they realize that what they have done was indeed foolish and by that time, it is already too late to go back to their first family.
Some know that the feeling is right, that the love is inextinguishable, but they are torn between choosing to fight for that love or to suffer for the rest of their lives.
A coin always has two sides. In the case I described on the preceding paragraph, which I think best suits your case, I will discuss the two options available for the both of you.
The first option : go for the you-and-me-against-the-world set up.
The repercussions : A broken family, which results to having delinquent children. Murder, if the aggrieved party could not stand being left alone. As for you, my friend, your family may disown you. And of course, you would lose your current relationship which offers a more comfortable situation for you. Oh, and another thing… If he decides to take his kids with him, can you accept his kids and love them as your own?
How to handle the repercussions : For the murder thing, I do not have any solution because we cannot control how a dumped wife/boyfriend would act. For the broken family and delinquent children, explaining to the children that it is not their fault will lessen the risk of juvenile delinquency. What would prevent them from being delinquents is if you constantly shower them with affection even if you already have your own life without their mother, or better yet, take them with you. If despite all your efforts to shower them with affection they choose to be delinquents, it is no longer your fault. Moreover, do not think about people not being able to move on. It is true, being left by a husband or a girlfriend is painful, but the cliché that time heals all wounds really does apply. If you two can brave all the possible repercussions, face the world together, and stick with your love for each other knowing that it is indeed true and what you wanted for the rest of your life, then you can be happy together despite that selfish act. Being selfish is not bad, if you can find yourself on your deathbed smiling and saying you would not have chosen to live your life otherwise.
But choose to go against the world if and only if THE TWO OF YOU are willing to give it one hell of a shot.
The second option : suffer for the rest of your life.
This is your lesser evil option, taking into consideration the standards set for us by the world, but taking into consideration the standards one sets for oneself, this is the greater evil because in choosing this, it is as if you have sentenced yourself to death.
What does passion mean? It means to suffer. Choose suffering, burn for your desire, and be consumed by it. This is the bolder decision, as compared to your first option, in my opinion. When the guy decided to get married, he closed his doors to anyone who will come his way. Choosing to be with you my friend, means having no backbone to stand by his decisions and be firm with his previous choices—not embracing his fate (which is, by the way, another Nietzschean concept known as ‘amor fati’) and not being human enough to suffer the consequences of his actions. And you my friend, as a lover of your own fate, will embrace your fate that you are destined to love someone you cannot have in this lifetime. If you love him this much, may I suggest that you live alone if you can not offer the same intensity of love with your boyfriend.
I don’t know, really. Everything is up to the both of you. Meanwhile, here are some teasers for you to think about, and weigh the intensity of your emotion, from my good night short messages file:
I realize that I love you by this: that you leave in me a wound I do not want to replace. –Jacques Derrida, Envois
NOTE : I think this should have been heal instead of replace. Probably accountable against the translator. If you are suffering from love, and yet happy despite the suffering, this will apply. I think to love is to be happy despite the suffering. To be sad, neurotic, and unsteady because of a suffering from matters of the heart, that is passion. We must learn to differentiate the two. Love knows how to accept things. Passion is the inner combustion that consumes you, until you turn to ashes. Of the two, passion is short-lived as it tends to burn you and itself out. Love lasts for a lifetime, but it is lighter as compared to passion which gives you fever while you are at its bout. Fortunately, passion always passes and when it has already passed, you can just laugh your heart out at how feverish you allow yourself to get. Love, true love for the matter, never fades even if it does leave you empty-handed.
Anything less than mad, passionate, extraordinary love is a waste of your time. There are too many mediocre things in life to deal with and love shouldn’t be one of them. –A Dream for an Insomniac
NOTE : When we say mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it has to come from both parties. It has to be reciprocated in the EXACT intensity. If one cannot reciprocate the intensity the other gives, it is a waste of time. Better to live alone than to let ourselves burn for someone who cannot risk being consumed by love.
And finally… a five-in-a-row from Jessica Zafra’s Chicken Pox for the Soul :
The more orderly you are, the more likely you are to be driven bonkers by love.
The question is not why fools fall in love. It is expected of them. When “smart” people fall in love—that’s the problem.
Love may arise through spontaneous combustion, or creep up behind you and hit you on the head like a sledgehammer.
Although it may flare up instantly, love dies with excruciating slowness. You may decide at this very moment that you are no longer in love, and your brain might understand perfectly, but the rest of you will take time to grasp this radical concept. The heart and the stomach are particularly slow to learn. And so you may be sure that the affair is over, and still feel a stabbing pain in the area of your heart when someone mentions his name. You may have exorcised him from your life, and still feel a punch in the gut when you meet him accidentally.
Love is a form of hysteria. Fortunately, it always passes. (Note : This fifth one is my favorite, being sometimes cynical about love. But then again, there are some things you do not want to end—like a once in every lifetime love.)
It is surreal yet wonderful to love someone and be loved by someone whom you can not really have, but sometimes, some things are only beautiful and perfect because you can not have them. But I think it would be good to always confirm where you two stand with each other. After all, the supreme happiness of life comes from the conviction that we are loved.
On the side… If you would be asking me, I would rather embrace my fate of having the right love at the wrong time and not go for the you-and-me-against-the-world leap. Why? Because it is so much more romantic!!!
Ciao!
