Meditation is a strange trip, leading to unexpected places within one’s psyche.
Modern day spirituality – call it New Age or not - has called out fear as the opposite of love, and our problems come down to being in a state of fear and not love.
That sounds like an easy problem to take care of, and I wish it were that simple. But it’s not.
I think the opposite of love is all about power, the aphrodisiac of the ego.
Power is far more seductive than fear.
The more I’ve experienced and the more I’ve observed within the dysfunctional arena of love, I’ve found that power is the enemy. Our most basic good and evil struggles is the tug of war between the two.
I think most of us can remember not so much the one who got away, so much as the one who was never caught.
Can’t you still picture that would-be beloved who was always out of reach?
Can you still feel the residual of past yearning churning in you belly?
“Why doesn’t he call?”
“Why is she so distant?”
“How can they not love me when I’m so good to them?”
Maybe the reason was because there is pleasure to receiving the love without giving any back. Maybe you weren’t challenging enough.
Power.
On a less romantic note, can’t most of us think of a time when we did something we knew was wrong, but were tempted by the short-term benefits?
How many of us acknowledged it to the person wronged with a sincere apology?
Was the burden of your conscience enough to direct you to the high road?
Even after the long term consequences were starting to demand pay back?
Enough said.
In any unhealthy group – family, work, friendship, relationship - in the struggle between love and pride, power usually wins because who wants to surrender in a struggle?
Power feeds the ego at the starvation of the heart, but the more powerful in toxic groups ignore that painful stress to couple, family, and even community welfare.
The powerful get their strokes and that satisfies. Guess who gets stuck paying off the emotional tab, and guess what gets used to hook you?
After all, don’t you want them to be happy?
If you truly loved them, of course you would.
Yet don’t they want you to be happy?
But you should be happy, for you’re given a place in their lives and how can that not make you feel loved?
I speak from experience and my track record proves it.
My significant relationships were with extremely self-centered people. These men never considered my feelings in the way things were supposed to go in the relationship.
When it came to “fixing” our problems, the focus was on their malcontent and my inadequacy. As an extension of him, I wasn’t supposed to be unhappy, and if I was, I should just get over it because there was certainly nothing wrong with him.
And the awful part is that I accepted that dynamic until I was so miserable I extricated myself from the tar baby. That is always a torture.
Such were my thoughts and memories as I folded paper.
Around 500 cranes, I noticed that the traveling gym rat had not responded to the letter I wrote about an incredible kayaking trip I had taken.
As I focused on that, I fumed that this project was a stupid idea on the day I got a package from Jeff, the friend who had first told me about folding the cranes.
Inside the package was a blue kimono and a note explaining that he had gotten it for me a year and a half ago in Tokyo, and how sorry he was it had taken so long to send it on.
But the kicker was on the kimono – it was covered with cranes in flight.
My jaw had to be picked up off the floor.
Since the Buddha said there are no coincidences - and I respect the Buddha - I took it as a sign to hold the faith and keep folding.
By 600 cranes, I had gotten really creative. Cutting out equidistant squares from magazines and photographs made for some far more unique, one-of-a-kind cranes.
One morning, I sitting on the ground in the long line of people who had gotten there early for the annual ski swap – the one chance every year to get good gear cheap. People practically camp out to be one of the first in line.
I sat on the ground, and folded paper as I waited with everybody else.
A man sitting nearby noticed and told me that he and some friends had made a thousand cranes out of gold paper for a Japanese couple about to get married. It was a traditional thing to do and according to legend, it brought good luck to the newlyweds.
“These are nice folds,” he said, picking up one of my paper birds.
My road to love has suffered many gridlocks as I dated the no-good’uns and ne’er-do-wells. There were nice guys who asked me out and sometimes I dated one and they were always a pleasure to be around.
But there was always a reason why it wouldn’t last. And frankly, that reason was because I wouldn’t give them a real chance.
Of all my self-destructive patterns when it came to love, I had to see all the time wasted for what it was – wasted time – every time I yearned for the love who was out of reach, falling madly in love for the friend who liked me well enough, but just wasn’t interested.
That disinterest put him on a pedestal high above me and I pined more than ever, paying no mind to the suitors who offered something real.
When I had folded over 700 cranes I realized I wasn’t even sure what I was wishing for.
