Thursday, June 16, 2005
The Hardest Button to Button
I'm an avid dreamer. At night, when I tuck myself in, wrap the duvet under my legs, and attempt to put the day behind me, I look forward to the moments about to play out in my mind. Nightmares are seldom and tend to be the recurring kind, so dreaming is often pleasant and, at times, much more bearable than the real worlds I inhabit during the day. My dreams are never surreal, always full color, full of emotion and made up of the real people I see day in and day out. Some mornings I struggle with separating the fact from the fiction, the actual timeline of my life versus the courses I take in my dreams. I remember an episode on tv one time when a terminally-ill woman was fighting her family and friends because she wanted her doctors to induce a coma to allow her to live the remains of her life in dreams. There are days when I cannot blame her. But, there are also days, like today, when I wake up and could never imagine choosing such a life. Not necessarily because my waking moments are so pleasant but rather because the dreams aren't always so satisfying.
Last night, I dreamt that I had a knock-down, drag out screaming match with a close friend and, because we couldn't reconcile our differences, the relationship was over. The moment was painful and loud and when I woke this morning the hurt and the fear of actually having such an encounter were still very, very present. Those feelings have lingered through the day, brought me low and knocked the wind right out of me. I wish I could say this is rare, that dreams never affect me in such an insane way, but, this is actually a somewhat regular occurence. Some mornings I feel energized, full of excitement and happiness. Other days, I'm so angry I can hardly speak. All because of the life I live and feel in my dreams.
Dreams like the one last night and mornings like today are the events that make you take a step back, drop to your knees, and pray to God that those events never play out in real life. It makes you happy for what you have, sad for what you could lose, and willing to work hard to keep moments like that at bay. I think those dreams also speak to the bigger emotions tucked away in my subconcious that come from living with people and dealing with relationships.
Relationships are hard because people are hard. For all the time that I have spent in my life attempting to study human communication, I've come up short in the struggle to understand human behavior and, much more difficult, the workings of the mind and heart. My dreams allow me to work through my own issues, but real life rarely gives me the same insight into the thoughts and feelings of other people. I can infer the meaning of a touch or a tone, but inference and assumptions are almost never correct and tend to only add to the confusion and elevate the emotion. Added to the choas is the attempt to communicate with and understand the other sex. Women admit to their complexity but can, sometimes, easily understand the thoughts and actions of another woman. Men claim to be simple but are really just as screwed up and complex as women, giving them a rather unfair edge. When brought together, there can be no end to the frustration that comes from attempting to eek out some straight answers. Yes never means yes and no almost always means the exact opposite. Maybe might be a no, it could mean yes, but, especially when dealing with men, it generally tends to mean, "I haven't really thought about it that much to give you a real answer." I hate maybe's.
Communication aside, women and men want and need very different things from the other. A woman, for example, wants to talk because she needs the emotional connection. She closes her eyes when she kisses a man because she feels the moment. She goes out of her way to provide for someone because that is one way she chooses to express the affection she has for the recipient. All she really wants is for a man to understand her, accept her, and give back at the same level he receives. On the other hand, you have a man who wants to talk because-wait, has that actually ever happened? A man wanting to talk? He closes his eyes when he kisses a woman so he can picture Angelina Jolie without the distraction of another's face. He goes out of his way to provide for someone because he generally wants something from the recipient and can't think of another way to go about getting it. Supposedly, all he really wants is one thing and every action and every word is aimed at procurring a little tail. I don't mean to be harsh (well, maybe I do a little) but this is just what I've observed so far in my study of human interaction.
Not that this is any kind of breaking news. I don't think I've asked anything that people haven't been asking since the Garden and the Fall. Do you think Adam ever really got Eve? Do you think she came with a manual that he forgot to pack on his way out of Eden? I'm pretty sure that until real life is like dreams and we can manipulate people and situations with the flick of the mind, we'll continue to dance around these issues and problems. And it won't be like a waltz or the foxtrot, something elegant and magical. It will probably be something a bit more frantic and obnoxious, kind of like Flashdance or the macarena. Stupid macarena.
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Last night, I dreamt that I had a knock-down, drag out screaming match with a close friend and, because we couldn't reconcile our differences, the relationship was over. The moment was painful and loud and when I woke this morning the hurt and the fear of actually having such an encounter were still very, very present. Those feelings have lingered through the day, brought me low and knocked the wind right out of me. I wish I could say this is rare, that dreams never affect me in such an insane way, but, this is actually a somewhat regular occurence. Some mornings I feel energized, full of excitement and happiness. Other days, I'm so angry I can hardly speak. All because of the life I live and feel in my dreams.
Dreams like the one last night and mornings like today are the events that make you take a step back, drop to your knees, and pray to God that those events never play out in real life. It makes you happy for what you have, sad for what you could lose, and willing to work hard to keep moments like that at bay. I think those dreams also speak to the bigger emotions tucked away in my subconcious that come from living with people and dealing with relationships.
Relationships are hard because people are hard. For all the time that I have spent in my life attempting to study human communication, I've come up short in the struggle to understand human behavior and, much more difficult, the workings of the mind and heart. My dreams allow me to work through my own issues, but real life rarely gives me the same insight into the thoughts and feelings of other people. I can infer the meaning of a touch or a tone, but inference and assumptions are almost never correct and tend to only add to the confusion and elevate the emotion. Added to the choas is the attempt to communicate with and understand the other sex. Women admit to their complexity but can, sometimes, easily understand the thoughts and actions of another woman. Men claim to be simple but are really just as screwed up and complex as women, giving them a rather unfair edge. When brought together, there can be no end to the frustration that comes from attempting to eek out some straight answers. Yes never means yes and no almost always means the exact opposite. Maybe might be a no, it could mean yes, but, especially when dealing with men, it generally tends to mean, "I haven't really thought about it that much to give you a real answer." I hate maybe's.
Communication aside, women and men want and need very different things from the other. A woman, for example, wants to talk because she needs the emotional connection. She closes her eyes when she kisses a man because she feels the moment. She goes out of her way to provide for someone because that is one way she chooses to express the affection she has for the recipient. All she really wants is for a man to understand her, accept her, and give back at the same level he receives. On the other hand, you have a man who wants to talk because-wait, has that actually ever happened? A man wanting to talk? He closes his eyes when he kisses a woman so he can picture Angelina Jolie without the distraction of another's face. He goes out of his way to provide for someone because he generally wants something from the recipient and can't think of another way to go about getting it. Supposedly, all he really wants is one thing and every action and every word is aimed at procurring a little tail. I don't mean to be harsh (well, maybe I do a little) but this is just what I've observed so far in my study of human interaction.
Not that this is any kind of breaking news. I don't think I've asked anything that people haven't been asking since the Garden and the Fall. Do you think Adam ever really got Eve? Do you think she came with a manual that he forgot to pack on his way out of Eden? I'm pretty sure that until real life is like dreams and we can manipulate people and situations with the flick of the mind, we'll continue to dance around these issues and problems. And it won't be like a waltz or the foxtrot, something elegant and magical. It will probably be something a bit more frantic and obnoxious, kind of like Flashdance or the macarena. Stupid macarena.
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