~A little less than the angels~

A long, odd day of problem solving.  And here is a matter of business I have to cover right away: my friend, Linda, is doing a giveaway on her blog, and I want to win it.  And I get more chances to win if I mention it here.  But not if everybody runs over there and enters, which will actually reduce my chances.  Still, if you want to see some cool stuff – you have to go here and look and then leave a comment.  As long as you pretend you are me. (Rush!!  You DID that!!!  YAY!!!!)

Okay.

The Post

This happened to me once, oddly, when I was sitting on the back of a horse.  I was a senior in high school then, hanging out with friends.  I say oddly, because horses were a rare thing for me in that time and place.  I don’t remember where we were, except that I was riding next to a boy I wanted bad.  Not because I wanted to—you know—for heaven’s sake; that kind of thing was far, far from my young and fresh imagination.  I was just head over heels in love with him—and full of the confused philosophy that kind of very young love seems to infect you with.  And a kiss.  Maybe I was hoping for a kiss.

Artlessly, I posed for him a question I’d been wrestling with for several weeks: “What IS love, anyway?”  I probably wrinkled my nose as I asked it, because for me, this was a thorny problem.

Predictably, his answer had a lot to do with him putting space between his horse and mine.

It had been a serious and honest question.  And I ask it still, from time to time.  I could have been asking, “Is love that hot and cold that runs up the inside of your arms and in your stomach when someone you  – want (and what does THAT mean?) – does something that tells you he knows you’re alive?”

But no.  My question was more complicated than that.  Because whenever I happen to remember that time, my mother’s face is suddenly there behind my eyes.  I couldn’t even figure out how I felt about my family.  Certainly not the way I felt about that boy.  And I knew I that I loved my family.  Or at least, it was impossible for me not to love them.  Whatever that meant—loving them. I didn’t feel like clutching my heart and blinking back tears every time I saw them.  I didn’t get flutters.  I didn’t feel—honestly, I couldn’t find a specific feeling, isolate it, identify it.

So was love a feeling?  Or was it something else entirely?

And my question here is outside of the stance of human goodness: that we care about all people and be well-disposed and helpful as we can in all circumstances.  I’m talking about the serious, specific relationships that are the structure of our lives.  The kind that require us to be emotionally responsible on a long term, logistically intimate basis.

Above

Rachel and I were discussing something close to that the other day.  Talking about friendship.  I wonder, can you pin down a “feeling” that you can label as friendship?  Or is it defined in function?  At the end of our discussion, we’d reached this philosophical place:

You meet people, and through your function with them, you either grow to keep them around, or the relationship eventually fades and fails.  Once you have begun to build friendship, linking your lives together a little bit at a time till you begin to know each other, there come times when you may have to take a pause and reconsider the investment. In the end, it’s almost like an opportunity cost situation: what does that person bring into your life?  There’s value there—emotional, intellectual, spiritual and logistic.  And what does that person cost your life?  Because every real relationship has its costs—again, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually and logistically.

Good friendships are the ones in which the aggregate of the benefit to both easily offsets the costs to either.  This is when the relationship is mutually healthy and supportive and joyful. But there is never going to be a human relationship that doesn’t cost somebody something.

When you are glad to pay what seems to you not-that-much for the chance of getting in return all the wonderfulness that comes with your friend—and it works that way both ways—you are in da very good place.  Even when the cost is really not that light—even when the cost is sometimes genuinely heavy—if the benefit is sweet enough to you, the friendship can remain viable.

Then there are the bad friendships.  Bad friendships are the ones in which the costs overshadow the benefit, and those are often lopsided—one side getting all the benefit, the other paying all the bills.  This is not da very good place.  And it’s surprising how long a “nice” person will let something like this go on, draining her own bank because she is a nice person and can’t do anything that isn’t nice—an act of self-preservation, for instance.  Even setting limits seems too harsh for some people.  When that’s the case, life can be pretty wearing and distressing.

The problem is, you have only so much you can give: your time, your energy, your money, your things, your patience – all limited.  And if you are married, all of those things go first into the marriage.  And if you have children, that is the ultimate and true investment: everything you have goes there first.  You can only stock a friendship with what you have left over from those first and most important relationships.

Murphy brought this whole thing home for me the other day when he thanked me for accommodating him so much.  “You keep re-arranging your life just for me,” he said. And he was right—I’ve been putting things on the back burner, exercising an amazing flexibility, simply so that I can be there for him.  It isn’t convenient.  And the entire day can back up because of it.

I turned and looked at him, and all that came out of my mouth was, “I love you.”  And in that moment, I both remembered my old question and answered it: love is when there is no cost too high.

I wince as I say this, though – I’m talking about true love, here.  Real love.  Not the kind of “romantic,” irresponsible situation in which one person tries to purchase another person—to own and to have them regardless of lack of character—willing to pay everything they have for something of little if any value at all  (and by value, I mean power to function positively, healthily, supportively in the seeker’s life).  Some women will pay everything just to keep herself from being alone—or for the chance to feel useful (a needy, self-centered, stunt-hearted friend or lover is an endless opportunity for usefulness, however wasted the effort).

As I look at my children, I know that for them, no cost to my life is too high.  They are my jewels.  I would do anything to help them be what they could be.  (Actually, often G would actually do more—being braver.)  They are well worth keeping, even in light of the occasional thorns. (There are no thorns on me, of course. *Snort*) I’m not sure how this would all work out if they weren’t—if no amount of work or giving or energy could save them from a self that can’t or won’t be saved and is actually destructive. How much can you give one without short-changing the rest?

It’s all so complicated. And so central to the soul.

Anyway, I look at my family—sisters, brothers, parents—and my friends, and suddenly, I think I kind of see part of the answer to my old question: I can tell when I love somebody by how much I am willing to pay to keep them.

I guess I’m asking—does any of this make sense, and what you what you think?