The Loves in our life
also, some musings on yin-yang
Hey everyone,
Happy Sunday! Here’s a pic from a place nearby where I live in Saigon where people play kite. Happy big city boi who still gets to play!
I have been holding the tension between quality & frequency of the newsletter.
In this day and age where our inbox is almost always flooded, high quality content matters. Yet in keeping with the name of this newsletter, Enzyme for Thought, not A Five-Star Exquisite Dinner for Thoughts, I'll do quick updates once in a while like this.
I'll also keep it personal, philosophical and practical, as true to the original spirits.
Please let me know how you laike this shorter format.
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I've been reflecting, reading and exploring around the topic of masculinity & femininity, men & women in the context of past, present and future personal relationships, be it friendship, intimate, sexual and the like. Part of that is me owning up and showing up to my maleness, something I sort of skipped before.
As Freud once said, love and work are the two cornerstones of human life.
I am coming to see more and more that outer relationship with other people mirror my own journey too. Especially in intimate relationships with wonderful women, with the wonderful exception of a few brotherly friends whom I feel such closeness with (which you'd see later).
A book I'm reading, As Lovers Do, provides very good larger context for love relationships. Here are a few thoughts worth contemplating on it.
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The psychologist and therapist Shirley Luthman describes the fundamental desire in each of us to expand, whether in depth or breadth or both, to be more complex and also integrated, as part of the feminine force or intuition. Meanwhile, the drive to have a specific form, to have structure that allows us to produce and assert concrete things in the world, is considered the masculine.
The best metaphor I've come upon is a river. There has to be water flowing, and there has to be the river banks.
In healthy human development, intuition leads and logic follows.
As the timeless yin-yang symbol has shown, neither is complete without the other.
Translating in normal knowledge worker's terms: you begin by dreaming about what's possible and then follow by getting things done.
Very very often, these two forces are in conflict though. To get things done, you need structures. Productivity, routines, focus and so on. To dream about what's possible, you've got to leave all of those behind.
When is right to let go of old structures, old jobs, old relationships, old habits? When is right to create and seek for new ones? When is right to stay the in between space and listen to the unexpected call? Knowing all this timing is wisdom.
What often goes wrong is that it's very tempting to focus on just one.
Getting things done often becomes the master, i.e "productivity for productivity sake". This happened to me five years ago with my time management crisis, and it continues to plague many heavy thinking people who are incapable of dreaming and imagining a different possibilities. (Read a summary of Ian Mcgilchrist's excellent book, Master and the Emissary, if you need a well written scientific perspective on this)
The other extreme is equally bad. Here you have the stereotypical hippie "manifesting your dream" type who takes no action towards that direction. Law of Attraction doesn't only apply to the external things like people or money but also inner motivation such as the drive to act.
Now let's expand this idea and apply this to the relationship between masculine & feminine people (men & women for simplicity, don't butcher me on this my minority-supportive friends), it's very clear that men's getting thing done serve women's deep need to love everything. Men deeply want to produce, provide, assert in service of women's ever expanding pleasure and love.
This understanding gives me a HUGE appreciation for the traditional model of the husband providing for the wife taking care and raising her children. "Happy wife, happy life", so they say. It's one of the men's greatest honor to provide for his family.
In healthy dating and intimate relationships, it means the men surrender to the goal of giving the most pleasures to the women. All of that is done with respect the current boundaries of the men, of course. For example, you may not want to suddenly pay for an expensive fancy dinner to woo a woman you just met who are yet open to you (financial boundary).
Another personal example, since I have a strong drive to engage in and produce ideas that change lives (it feels like a sense of purpose), I will often feel very uncomfortable when time is taken away from that. When I get those work done, ideally in the morning, then in the afternoon I'd be so happy to be present and give pleasures to people around. Otherwise, I'd be a cranky aloof wall. What's most important is the relationship between these two forces are in a dynamic harmony, leading and following each other.
The last point that I want to ponder on today with a few questions is how inner and outer always mirror each other. The inner game is between those two forces within us, what Carl Jung calls anima/animus (inner feminine/inner masculine), or to use more modern term, achievement & fulfillment or success & happiness. How are these two forces within me in a harmonious, virtuous dance?
The outer game is in our relationship, especially intimate ones. How's my love relationship? Who are people I'm closest right now and what are they mirroring to me about what I deeply want and sorely need?
That's it for now.
Hope you have a good contemplative and playful Sunday and let me know how you prefer me to keep in touch.
Khuyen
The intimacy of friends
Here is my old & close friend from college, Robert, a cancer survivor, genuinely good person, wise beyond his age, highly articulate and handsome man.
I asked his permission to record this part of the conversation, because it was just too beautiful. Listen on if you wanted an example of an imperfect yet genuine connection between two male friends. No, we are not gay. Here we were sharing appreciation for each other. Both of us are on our own journey of being in touch with and expressing what is most difficult for us: intimacy. Appreciation. Our love for each other, as straight Asian guys.
Indeed, Robert looking for more intimacy and commitment in a relationship with a woman who is both beautiful inside & outside so if any of you are interested, reach out to me and I'll matchmake you. 😀 (preferably Colorado though)
He's very keen on hearing the impact of this conversation on you, so please write back to him at robert[dot]middlemist@gmail.com. To have a taste of his sardonic humor, lemme quote his closing comments "If you want to learn to live more vulnerably, just have cancer" 😅
Later at the end, I shared a poem that I very much love on Love itself by Czeslaw Milosz.
I hope you like it.
Quotes
On the types of people in our life. I find it super illuminating, with the only addition that seasons are cyclical. People come and go and come back! I love the last line: friendship is clairvoyant! 😍
People always come into your life for a reason, a season, or a lifetime.
When you figure out which it is, you know exactly what to do.
When someone is in your life for a REASON,
It is usually to meet a need you have expressed outwardly or inwardly.
They have come to assist you through a difficulty,
Or to provide you with guidance and support,
To aid you physically, emotionally, or even spiritually.
They may seem like a godsend to you, and they are.
They are there for the reason you need them to be.
Then, without any wrong doing on your part or at an inconvenient time,
This person will say or do something to bring the relationship to an end.
Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just walk away.
Sometimes they act up and force you to take a stand.
What we must realize is that our need has been met, our desire fulfilled; their work is done.
The prayer you sent up has been answered and it is now time to move on.
When people come into your life for a SEASON,
It is because your turn has come to share, grow, or learn.
They may bring you an experience of peace or make you laugh.
They may teach you something you have never done.
They usually give you an unbelievable amount of joy.
Believe it! It is real! But, only for a season.
And like Spring turns to Summer and Summer to Fall,
The season eventually ends.
LIFETIME relationships teach you lifetime lessons;
Those things you must build upon in order to have a solid emotional foundation.
Your job is to accept the lesson, love the person anyway;
And put what you have learned to use in all other relationships and areas in your life.
It is said that love is blind but friendship is clairvoyant.
Thank you for being part of my life,
Whether you were a reason, a season or a lifetime.
Who are the people in your life, reason, season or lifetime? Any type you are wishing for more?