A problem with people!

It seems that whenever I try to do something seriously I end up with a bunch of people who I disagree with. Larking around and having fun no problem cos it doesn't matter. At work - well we rarely agree with the boss and it doesn't matter anyway cos they're boss. But when there's the motivation to have a say - chances are there will be disagreements. I guess that is natural.

Most recently was in a Buddhist organisation. I knew from day 1 that things were wrong, but wanted to learn and maybe I just didn't understand. Buddhism is famously hard to understand. 5 years later I made many friends and had many responsibilities, but it was built on a house of cards because the roots were wrong and I disagreed. I had much faith in one member who inspired me to stay those years. Today he taught me that I should not have done that and should have followed my instinct. I was always frustrated and angry with him, simply because I was allowing myself to be led into a world that made no sense to me. The lesson there: always remain true to oneself!

Is there no relationship in the world I have had that has not been built on a house of cards?

A good friend from college was almost like a brother, but I knew it was temporary because we fundamentally disagreed on life. He said that it was enough to know life, I always maintained we must live what we know as the goal. In the end I just had to live.

A girl I once had an intense written relationship with was doomed to failure cos in truth it was founded on sex. And while I learned poetry, love and writing - the base foundation would never let itself be forgotten.

On meeting an ex I had lived with for 4 years I was amazed to be sharing stories we had never talked about in all those years! I realised I never really knew that girl. Do we ever really know anybody?

My parents are enigmas. My sister is very close, but again is it unbreakable?

The truth I got to here is that maybe we never really find that unbreakable soul mate with whome we can exist in complete sympathy. I imagine couples divorcing after decades and wondering how that person they felt so close to could harbour that seed of treachery.

Humour is the obvious answer. Forget about it, have a laugh, be shallow and just take it as it comes.

That's not me (at the moment). Humour was never my chosen lasting solution to anything. Suspicious of that thing.

Maybe it is something to just accept about life that the desire for complete unconditional communion with other people is a dream. Something for the blissful world of Eden. There will always be difficulties, always disagreements and if like me you don't want to accept a mediocre compromise then like all good rock bands, relationships of all sorts are temporary.

There is of course the other way of looking at it. Maybe my problem with being close to people comes from myself. That really I wish for that independence. That finding unsurmountable obstacles to every relationship is just part of the plan to remain independent.

Which is interesting from the stand-point of this weblog. I am trying to iron out my own sense of dissatisfaction and mystery with life, but doing so in a semi-public space. Do I need people to read this and does that give me a sense of companionship rather than writing into the void as I have done in the past to my harddrive. My honest sense there is that there is more motivation to write into a public space, while writing to the harddrive does seem a bit pointless. Maybe I'll publish the contents of that harddrive one day. Was that the plan years ago when I wrote it? Do we always write with some planned audience? And that makes a new blog entry... finish this first...

But writing to a reader is a comforting thing there is no doubt. We already know I desire communion with other people - that is a universal thing? I am human and I need to be loved so Morrissey sang. So is the problem simply that I wish independence but then find that it is lonely? The trade off between having your own way and having friends? The two are ultimately at odds and require compromise. Ego verses society, self verses other, subject verses object.

Not entirely. The search I return to today is the search for a clear and unified view of life, which I have sort since I was a very young child. The problem is that for such an obsessive search there can be no compromise and unfortunately that is going to make me very difficult for others.

So it is accepted here like Descartes in his Meditations that during this search is follows that I will experience the loneliness and isolation that comes from such uncompromising and personal work. And such experiences should be understood to come naturally for anyone who takes on any personal endeavour. If we wish communion closely with others we need to weaken the sense of self, but the cost of course is that there is no deep self on the other side to commune with! No fun for all the romantic idealists out there.

Well this search began when I was maybe only 8 so I am already far down this road.