Drop­ping Drama’s Appeal

I don’t see it my way, either!

We left off last week hav­ing looked at “what hap­pens next,†once romance fades. I said that this hap­pens 100% of the time.

I guess you could say that the “roman­tic notion†is what gets blown out of the water. And that notion is that, if some­one loves me, they will see things my way, and agree with me, and do things my way. Because, after all, “I have finally found ‘prince(ss) charming!’

While this is not a very rad­i­cal idea, the cause of rela­tional drama is that, despite find­ing a part­ner, you’re still going to die.

It’s pretty clear that anx­i­ety starts when we rec­og­nize the inevitabil­ity of our own death. Most peo­ple are reluc­tant to talk about their death, and even flinch a bit over the death of peo­ple close to them. In phi­los­o­phy, the exis­ten­tial­ists describe this anx­i­ety as Angst — the fear of non-being.

Romance is the notion that a rela­tion­ship with “an-other†will some­how immu­nize me from death. If I am with the ‘right’ per­son, I will live hap­pily ever after. My fears will dis­solve, my needs will be met, and I will be for­ever bliss­ful. And because of the hor­mone rush of lust, for a time, our chem­istry is shifted to a state of bliss.

Betrayal feel­ings arise as the bliss wears off.

And it’s not even in colour!

Con­flict, then, might be seen as the end of the diver­sion through la-la land. Romance allows us to step out of the day-to-day real­ity of our mortality.

In a sense, it’s what hap­pens to Dorothy in the Wiz­ard of Oz. Off she goes to Munchkin-land, where every­thing is mytho-poetic — where heroes search for hearts and brains and courage, and good tri­umphs over evil. And then, she wakes up in Kansas, and (despite the ruby slip­pers) it was all a dream.

If you sub­sti­tute a wed­ding ring for ruby slip­pers, con­flict is leav­ing Oz and return­ing to Kansas.

There is an addic­tive qual­ity to romance (which actu­ally does release opiate-like drugs into our brains) — the “flush†of romance is like a drug high. Easy to see why peo­ple crave it.

Con­flict sim­ply brings us back into the here and now.

In Zen, we work toward sim­ple pres­ence with what­ever “is.†As such, a sense of con­flict in view (and we agree here that all con­flict is, at its base, a dis­agree­ment as to per­spec­tive?) presents us with the oppor­tu­nity to either fight, or get curious.

The Angst — the essen­tial dis­ap­point­ment, comes from the pain of real­iz­ing that it is impos­si­ble have the same per­spec­tive as another. You really, really have to get this one. It’s not that you haven’t found, or are not in rela­tion­ship with, the right per­son. It’s that we, by def­i­n­i­tion see every­thing differently.

A sim­ple exper­i­ment — stand next to some­one and look at something.

You ten­dency will be to think, “We are look­ing at the same thing.†Now, the­o­ret­i­cally, the object you are look­ing at exists in some pure, unde­fined state. How­ever, it’s impos­si­ble to prove this, because as soon as we begin defin­ing (think­ing about) the object, we con­vince our­selves that the way we see it, is the way it actu­ally is.

And the per­son next to you is doing exactly the same thing. I can absolutely guar­an­tee their def­i­n­i­tion is not the same as yours.

This is because of a very sim­ple principle—perspective is everything.

I feel…so… distorted!

Every­one brings their his­tory to bear on every­thing “seen.†And none of us have the same his­tory. Another exper­i­ment. Go to an art gallery. Sit near a piece of mod­ern art — say Picasso, or Dali. Lis­ten, as peo­ple expe­ri­ence the piece of art. Some will love it, some will hate it. Some will “get it,†some won’t.

And of course, those you judge to have “got­ten it†will sim­ply be describ­ing it in a way that is close to your way. It’s like the elec­tions in Canada and the U.S. The can­di­dates have opin­ions on top­ics (the econ­omy, indus­try, bailouts, etc.) If you take a step back, all you can say is, “Their opin­ions are dif­fer­ent.†There is no way to know, for exam­ple, if the present bailout in the States will “work.†As they say, “Time will tell.â€

But as we lis­ten, our fil­ters and expe­ri­ence kick in. I’m a left-winger, and so favour, in Canada the Lib­er­als (actu­ally I favour the NDP, but vote strate­gi­cally.) In the States, I would be a Demo­c­rat. So, I tend to “buy†what the can­di­dates say, as they match up with my pre-conceived notions, and demo­nize the opposition.

Con­flict hap­pens when I bump up against my
pre-conceived notions of “how things are.â€

As romance fades, I am left with the real­iza­tion that my part­ner is not me, and comes from a totally dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive. (S)he thinks dif­fer­ently, eval­u­ates dif­fer­ently, and has an entirely dif­fer­ent set of val­ues. This is just the way it is.

Then, the Angst returns. “This time I thought I found the per­son that would res­cue me from my alone­ness and alien­ation. For a time it seemed that this was the case. Now, I real­ize (s)he is not going to save me, and is also ‘wrong.’ †(i.e. thinks dif­fer­ently than me.) “I’ve failed, been betrayed, again.â€

Well, nope.

Con­flict is the real­iza­tion of a dif­fer­ence of perspective.

You can spend your time try­ing to force your part­ner into “see­ing things my way,†or you can get curious.

Dar and I have been together since 1983, and as I look back, there has only been one time when we needed to agree. We had a talk about the foun­da­tion of our rela­tion­ship. We decided to dis­cuss our “line in the sand…†the ‘make or break’ issue for us. Now, many we know have tons of such lines, and they tend to be picky and stu­pid. One client ended her mar­riage because she got home and her hus­band for­got to wipe out the kitchen sink. She assured me that this was proof of his totally dis­re­gard for her and her needs.

Dar and I decided upon “Com­plete hon­esty†as our line. Sim­ple. Effi­cient. Easy to put into prac­tice as it fits with every­thing we say and do.

Beyond this one ‘line,’ none of our other con­flicts have ever required that we totally agree. We have bumped our noses against the nor­mal range of issues, and have dis­cov­ered that we can work with each oth­ers per­spec­tives. We are not clones of each other, and for­tu­nately, we have been able to con­tin­u­ally get over our­selves when we want to demand that the other per­son “comply.â€

We do this by being curi­ous, as opposed to look­ing for “who’s right.â€

More on curi­ously next article.