love
Addictions
Thursday, June 24th, 2010 | analysis, sex | 3 Comments
Too much of a good thing is always bad, they say. Also, too much of a good thing can lead to addiction, no matter what that good thing is, or how innocent it seems – chemical liaisons just form in one’s brain, pleasure inducing hormones such as dopamine and serotonin get repeatedly released, in high quantities, whenever you get that “good thing” around (dopamine) or have a good taste of it (serotonin), and there we are. It works for chocolate, for mountain rides, shopping, blackjack and it also, or especially, works for sex, love and their magnificent combination.
Now, as human beings we value freedom. We value it so much that we fail to truly understand it many times, and, generally, we realize it’s gone only in the most trivial, obvious cases. Truth is, we lose it each time we refuse to fully understand a situation, each time we trade realism for idealism because idealism sounds so much better, only to end up with a deformed perception on reality – like a clear image on it would be easily achievable, anyway…
We love chocolate for the delicious reward that it is, shopping for the illusions of beauty and infinite seduction it brings for our narcissistic selves, idealism for its righteous passion, and we love love. Many of our addictions are originally natural and nonetheless useful things. Even blackjack – I know someone who made a living for his family out of it, during the hard period following World War II. But when we can’t resist emptying our debit & credit cards at the mall, we lose ourselves. Even more when we can’t see the reality and refuse to understand the whole depth of people in their purely human greatness and even more human misery or mediocrity – an addiction to idealism leads fast enough to a taste for misconceptions and prejudice. And even more when love ceases to be generous and becomes dependence and obsession (great article here, by the way, although it only covers erotical love).
Someone told me recently that everyone is an addict, and if they should be addicted to something, they would chose love and ideals. My firm belief is that nicotine would be better.
Us, the world and its problems
Monday, March 9th, 2009 | analysis, life, people | No Comments
Ever wondered what’s wrong with the world? Lately?
“Oh, not the voices again!” I hear you crying. “Not another financial-crisis article, pleeease. Cool down, relax, and just give us a speech of sex, luxury and refinement, ’cause that’s the way we want it.”
Trouble is this crisis seems to be ruining our lives more than just economically. First, it is excessively mediatised, over discussed, and so goddamn annoying. Secondly, it is basically everywhere and it’s affecting us all. Its main evilness: does not only produce inflation, debt and unemployment, but it also produces a large amount of stress and anxiety. We can live with inflation: we’ll simply cut some of our expenses and limit spending our cash on basic items. We can live with debt. We can live with unemployment, too: there are various ways to earn money and with some smarts and some little bit of creativity one can always make a living. However, living with the stress and anxiety produced by this conjecture is the worse part of it.
Worrying kills, they say. Truth is worrying kills everything. The uncertainty of tomorrow is making us less open to life. We just don’t seem to enjoy things the way we used to, and we don’t get the same courage and energy out of our leisures and hobbies. We don’t love less but we less express it and, also, less savor it. Because we are not free to, we are too busy worrying and worry has already taken us for good. Our relationships grow colder because of it, when it is in times of trouble we should lay more on others and others on us. Our mind starts producing risk-free solutions and scenarios, working for safety and stability, when one should think and fight for his own, sacred, personal development. When risk-free actually means freedom-free, slave to the stronger ones, their mechanisms and their laws.
Lets keep ourselves out of this, dear friends, for the love and sake of all beautiful things out there, for the true marvels the world and the human spirit so genuinely contain. Let us hope for better us. Let us love and let us not forget our friends, our sweethearts, our spirit and our happiness. Let us not work for a safer future, but for one that is richer in good will and humanity. Let us allow ourselves to forget stocks and to never forget or underestimate intimacy, in its deepest, most fulfilling sense. Let us be free and human despite everything, ’cause if there is a reason we were born for, it is love.
Thrill and Temptation part II
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008 | analysis | No Comments
So, back to the flirting-almost-cheating subject. Where were we? Yes, The Spell… It just works great and it adds some interest to even the most ordinary life. After all, that’s the thing box office hits are made of. And although it sounds really interesting as a story, it doesn’t take a genius to realize nobody can go on like this too long. It comes a moment when it’s either black, either white. Or red.
Because almost-sexual relationships always come to a turning point. There ain’t such a thing as keeping them safe and private forever. It’s the same as in physics: the tension between point A and point B won’t manage to grow and grow without some discharge, sooner or later, stronger or milder. A lightning, maybe, if we’re charged enough.
Real world seems to be having some rules when it comes to any knowable, existing stuff. You can say: “ok, nice chatting, but there’s somebody waiting for me at home whom I really love.” and end it right there, or at least end the temptation and sentence future guilty excitement to death. When you have something really great with a significant other, you simply know it. Grass may seem greener on the other side, but, no, error, it ain’t. Love is what makes the world go round, and loved ones deserve our loyalty and respect. Or you can find yourself in the position to understand that you were not having the relationship you desired, that you were not in love or that you were wasting your time on something dead and dry. Here, temptation is useful and it helps you find your freedom. You may try giving up your current lover and start seeing your “temptation”, or you can just leave your relationship and go looking for your great, precious self instead. That would be totally worthed. Thrill and temptation are prone to bring good things in one’s life, but it takes some lucidity and some management skills to make it work. When it does, it’s great.
Two more possible situations may the victim of temptation encounter, not out of her will, but lack of. The temptation may turn into an affair, while the lying and cheating gets serious. It’s more than difficult to be involved with two people at once, and one would make a big mistake in offering herself as subject of this emotional torture. You will loose something anyway, at some point, and it may hurt a thousand times more. Same goes for trying to escape the decision, and pretend not to see what’s going on, while continuing with the flirting thing after it has already shown obvious signs of becoming dangerous. Duplicity hurts. Lies hurt. And there are two, wait, no, three people you have to show respect to in this story: your lover, your “temptation”, and yourself.
As for my dear old friend I was telling you about, she somehow managed to keep the thrill and throw away the temptation. I guess she realised it wasn’t quite worthed, and I also believe that, having gone through this, the overall relationship with her boyfriend actually improved. There are moments when you need to get on the edge in order to better see what you’ve got and what you could loose. And these are the very moments when you start loving more.
Thrill and Temptation part I
Thursday, September 4th, 2008 | analysis | No Comments
It came as a surprise for me some years ago, when a dear friend of mine, extremely in love with her significant other, confessed she was being strongly led into temptation by a new, rather insipid acquaintance. Her boyfriend was out of town for the summer, and we all know how summer is… However, during a long period of time, there had never been a more faithful, reliable and wife-material girl than her. So, what the hell was going on?
Women don’t have the huge amount of hormones that awards the hunter title to basically normal, even bourgeois men. Women are genetically programmed to look for stability. And same blah-blah goes on and on. After all, there’s Penelope who’s continuously waiting for Ulysses, and not the other way around.
But as the main essence of femininity is contradiction, we find a donna mobile next to every Penelope, and, needless to say, even beyond the latter’s one endurable figure. A wandering eye or a wandering mind are both rooted in the oh very special, heartbeat-fastener thrill of new, unknown, unconquered territories. Especially when you’ve spent ages being a good girl, dangerous, mind-twisting affairs appear infinitely appealing. Sometimes it even doesn’t take a lot of looks or brains to make you click, just a fairly reasonable average subject and a moody overall period. Or some feeling-lonely time. Or neglectfulness. And as you find yourself getting closer and closer to the common sense borderline between flirt and guilt, you start admitting it is interesting. The whole situation becomes more and more movie-like or novel-like, and you start getting all the attention, compliments and whatever-else you were lacking lately. Plus the thrill. Double thrill, actually: it’s new, it’s unknown and it’s forbidden.
Quite a spell, right? Enough to make your knees shake, at least. But beyond it, the big picture of what you really want and feel is totally different. See now what I mean? Trouble.
[to be continued...]
Fairytales
Thursday, July 31st, 2008 | analysis, mythical, style | No Comments
Oh, those sweet old times! How trendy they prove to be today! We’re always in for some candlelight or vintage furniture, aren’t we? It’s just the charm of living brand new lives in brand old eras that steals our soul. It’s that beautiful, oh-so-polished image that wraps us into some novel/movie/whatsoever character and that usually lasts until candlelight goes out and the lightbulbs go in. Cause fairytales are just fairytales, right?
Truth is fifteen minutes of poetry won’t make up for 15 hours of prose. And we always come back to our daily life and those overused contemporary myths: The Strong Woman, The Self Made Man, The Success. It seems like The Princess, The Hero, The Accomplishment have transformed overnight in their Business-World-Equivalents. That’s the model for today, nothing else we’ve got in stock, so take it or leave it.
I was not aware of my own, personal need for fairytales until some years ago. Back then, I was in the middle of some love-affair and way too preoccupied with being cool about it. Being cool was cool, right? So I was being so cool that one day I realised it wasn’t fun anymore. I was looking on the window, smoking in silence, my dreams were blocked somewhere on the way, there was no thrill, no thrill at all. I was feeling strong, the night was warm, there was no wind blowing and no sense of adventure. Nothing could have been more boring. My lover was a nice, calm, almost passionless person and I wasn’t looking for commitment. Everything was awfully clear and there was nothing to fantasize about. Suddenly, I realised I was living an uninteresting solitude, as my experiences were losing their meaning, and I got extremely sad. And out of that, of course, because that boredom thing wasn’t making feel like a novel heroine at all.
What I came back to was not idle dreaming, but a world full of sense. An interesting solitude, where you could plant fairytales and let them grow. And then I actually realised the value of being able to wait, hope or fight for something. It’s not the adventure that makes our hearts beat faster, but the possibility of it.
So, the prose? It will always be there, but when you do have something to wait for, something to believe in, well, it just turns to poetry a lot easier. And then we can just get rid of all those models and write some true fairytales. True fairytales rule.