Is Letting Go same as Giving Up?

I've never been the one on giving up.

First thing that comes to mind, was my first relationship. On and off, arguments and fights, sorries and apologies - it was a horrifying experience, where pieces where desperately glued together. Hopes and imaginations run amok. The first time we broke it off, everything seemed surreal - It couldn't be happening. Maybe the phone would ring. Or I would receive a text message in a bit. Days passed to weeks, weeks to several months. Nothing.

I figured I might as well get on with my life.

Then he called back. Or was it me? I can't seem to remember. But we became friends... and things seemed alright. But after a few months... things started to get bad again. And I had to go through the same cycle all over again. It couldn't be real. Things seemed surreal. I'll wake up and find everything patched up - maybe. Three long years...

But it didn't.

A few months later, the second one came along. And it was short and sweet. But it turned surreal too. As surreal as it can get. I tried rationalizing this time, but failing miserably. A lot of wasted phone batteries, drama, hand burns and a broken wrist. But it was still surreal. But I eventually went back to real life, too.

But then, there was also the enclosed world that I lived in. Whenever I was debugging codes, finishing programming projects, figuring out Physics theories, calculating mathematical problems - time seemed caged into a loop. It was me, and the problem in front of me. No one could whisk me out of my reverie. That was surreal, too. I won't move until its done... and I would concentrate so much at I would jerk out of my seat when someone tapped me behind the shoulder.

Then philosophy came along, and launched an all out attack.

Absolutism. Escapism. Ideals. Sacrifice. Understanding. Value.

It made things so much worse, and so much harder. Now I had rationalism and logic to back up my previously immature stubborness. Why things should be the way they are. Why they aren't. What I could possibly do to attain it. What I had to endure. What I had to put up with. What I had to do to keep myself steady.

Now, I live in the surreal world all the time.

And I'm now back to where I started. When do you learn to know the best way is to let go? Is it synonymous to giving up? I don't want to give up. But is letting go about giving up? When do you decide that the best way to achieve the ideal, is to give up?

Stubborn streaks are hard to manage. Am I playing God? When you're a parent, when do you decide to stop sheltering your child and letting go so that they can learn by themselves? When do you stop to scold a teenage son to follow the things that you believe are right, learned though years of experience? When do you stop to show people what is right, and what is wrong, even if they end up not listening?

When do you begin to sacrifice your heart and mind to be broken, so as to hope that people learn?

Surreal, or reality?

What a Wonderful World

Wow, amazing! It IS a wonderful world...

Courtesy of youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTSFhIv9bYg&feature=related


What a Wonderful World

I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
They're really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
They'll learn much more than I'll never know
And I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Miscommunication

If I told you, "You are my friend, I treat you like my own", why do you think that I have betrayed you?
If I told you, "I love you", why do you still think that I have never paid attention?
If I told you, "I love you very much", why do you not believe me, and think that I only love you a little?
If you told me, "I DO love you", why do I think you have just used and taken advantage of me?

If right is right, and wrong is wrong, why do we have conflicts?
If love were always right and true, why is there always pain and suffering?
If life hit you with boulders and problems, one after the other, why have you cried out and mourned, "God, why have you forsaken me?"

If the words said were true and sincere, why does the other person always believes otherwise?


WHY?


Why do we spend our lives searching for happiness, when it is right in front of us? Why do we mourn at our state, when the sun rises in its beauty and glory, every day, for our whole lives? Why do we live to get what we want, when what we need is always there?

Why do you continue to think of what you understand and know, rather than understanding that the next person doesn't understand the same thing the way that you do? Why do you always assume that everyone else has lived life the way that you have, and burn them for not understanding how you see life? Why do you force people to see you as a victim, when you have decided and made yourself one, by your own decision? Why do you persist on living within your own world, uncaring for everyone else, when the rest of the world mourns as you do? Why do you continue on being angry at your parents, when they have raised you the best they can? Why do you stubbornly hold on to your imaginary perceptions, when he has already said no?

Why would you think I am right, when you have your own opinion?

Why don't you believe him?
Why don't you believe her?
Why don't you believe them?
Why don't you believe me?

When you have answered the questions, then you will understand, that the questions needn't be asked, at all.

Ask yourself first, before you ask others.

"I think in dead ends." (aka Buber's I-You relation)

I remember talking to a good friend of mine, years ago, describing the absolute frustration I encounter, in many of my attempts during the process of thinking.

I told him,
"I think in dead ends."

My friend laughed out hysterically (and for quite a while, too, to my consternation) and told his second brother. And his brother thought : dumb. Still does, in fact. Its no secret that I hate his brother. :)

"You're talking about a paradox, Claire."

In any case, ... and there began a wonderful friendship that still exists up to this day: sturdy, stable, strong and unbendable.

Maturity and experience goes a long way. And yet, I am still a long way from the end. But the things that we pick up along the road that we travel shape us and our understanding of the world, and ourselves. In the midst of all this, I came across many articles that spoke of ideas. Ideas that piqued me, ideas that brought forth ideals, ideas that were vulgar and with hypocrasy. But one of them, expounded on what exactly I felt and what I was contemplating that day when I told my friend about dead-ends.

Why reinvent the wheel, when someone else has described my state so perfectly?

An excerpt that I will probably bring with me wherever I go. From I and Thou
by Martin Buber, translated by Walter Kaufman. It is in my opinion, the definitive definition of Buber's I-You relation:

... Or man encounters being and becoming as what confronts him - always only one being and every thing only as a being. What is there reveals itself to him in the occurence, and what occurs there happens to him as being. Nothing else is present but this one, but this one cosmically. Measure and comparison have fled. It is up to you how much of the immeasurable becomes reality for you. The encounters do not order themselves to become a world, but each is for you a sign of the world order. They have no association with each other, but every one guarantees your association with the world. The world that appears to you in this way is unreliable, for it appears always new to you, and you cannot take it by its word. It lacks density, for everything in it permeates everything else. It lacks duration, for it comes even when not called and vanishes even when you cling to it. It cannot be surveyed: if you try to make it surveyable, you lose it. It comes-comes to fetch you-and if it does not reach you or encounter you it vanishes, but it comes again, transformed. It does not stand outside you, it touches your ground; and if you say "soul of my soul" you have not said too much. But beware of trying to transpose it into your soul-that way you destroy it. It is your present; you have a present only insofar as you have it;and you can make it into an object for you and experience and use it-you must do that again and again-and then you have no present anymore. Between you and it there is a reciprocity of giving: you say You to it and give yourself to it; it says You to you and gives itself to you. You canot come to an understanding about it with others; you are lonely with it; but it teaches you to encounter others and to stand your ground in such encounters; and through the grace of its advents and the melancholy of its departures it leads you to that You in which the lines of relation, though parallel, intersect. It does not help you to survive; it only helps you to have intimations of eternity.

The It-world hangs together in space and time.
The You-world does not hang together in space and time.
The individual You must become an It when the even of relation has run its course.
The individual It can become a You by entering into the event of relation.


... These are the two basic privileges of the It-World. They induce man to consider the It-world as the world in which one has to live and also can live comfortably - and that even offers us all sorts of stimulations and excitements, activities and knowledge. In this firm and wholesome chronicle the You-moments appear as queer lyric-dramatic episodes. Their spell may be seductive, but they pull us dangerously to extremes, loosening the well-tried structure, leaving behind more doubt than satisfaction, shaking up our security - altogether uncanny, altogether indispensable. Since one must after all return into "the world", why not stay in it in the first place? Why not call to order that which confronts us and send it home into objectivity?

One cannot live in the pure present: it would consume us if care were not taken that it is overcome quickly and thoroughtly. But in pure past one can live; in fact, only there can a life be arranged. One only has to fill every moment with experiencing and using, and it ceases to burn.


And in all the seriousness of truth, listen: without It a human being cannot live. But whoever lives only with that is not human.


We've all come a long way... still a long way to go! :)