Four Definitions of Love

Everywhere I look, people are confused about "love" but as I grow older and wiser, the true meaning becomes more and more clear to me. So today I thought I'd clarify some confusions about love by sharing the four main types of love that people talk about. You can read about them and decide for yourself which love you are feeling and which kind of love is worth fighting for.

There is the love of infatuation. This is what some call a genetic trick of the mind to get us to spread more sperm. It is the love that poets write about the most because poets write about what they don't understand. This is a blinding, obsessive love that we have no control over. It is not evolutionary. It rules our subconscious and lower senses and it confuses us completely. It doesn't make the world go round but it does help propagate the species. It is like a fairy serum that keeps us drunk to reality. Infatuation is something we all go through, a right of passage that could lead to either healthy, genuine love; or narcissistic love. Its something that just happens, something many wish would happen to them. Often, it happens at the wrong time with the wrong person.

There is narcissistic love. This love makes us think that another person is an extension of ourselves. We extend our ego to them and believe that anything they do is done to us. Co-dependent love is the same as naracissitic love because it comes from insecurity and lack of having a sense of a self of our own. When one believes that his only role is to serve another, that he is only good for providing for his lover or being his house wife or husband, he is not admitting that there is more to him than a role he plays for her. When one expects the other person to be there for her only and to be a servant, she is basically saying that she is not whole if he is not identifying himself with her. One becomes so obsessed with filling a role, that he feels trapped and ceases to grow. There is a lingering feeling that something is missing. This is the love of people who suffocate one another and people who stalk one another. This is the love of people who kill one another out of jealousy. A narcissistic lover can't be happy if there isn't someone there to constantly feed his ego. A narcissistic lover can't empathize with her lover or think selflessly about what is best for her lover because she is too wrapped up in her own needs. This kind of love does not make the world go round. It is a prison, a selfish love that destroys the self and the self of the other.

There is genuine, committed love. This is when love ceases to be a noun and starts to become a verb. Love is something one does, not something one feels. This is when one looks at another person and decides to be there for him, through thick or thin not because one has to but because one wants to. This is a love of choice, not something that just happens. Genuine love is also respect, sacrifice and compassion. One looks at another and wants her to be the best person she can be, not just for him but for her sake, for the sake of how she will serve her family and society. We know that love can not grow if we do not evolve with it. We provide attention, nurturing and time as one does when one tends to a garden so it can grow in a healthy way. We do not see this nurturing as a chore but as a rewarding meditation and an act of joy. In doing this, the relationship grows spiritually. This kind of love creates healthy bonds, healthy children and healthy communities. It takes a strong self to show this kind of love because commitment takes risk. One knows she could lose the other at any moment but she decides to love him anyway and allow him to be free to be who he is. Putting one's narcissistic needs aside requires him to be a better person so he evolves as a result. Because there is freedom to be who one is and enough maturity for development, one feels constantly fulfilled and happy. This kind of love helps the world go round because the time one puts into it brings its own reward. It develops maturity, wisdom and growth.

There is universal, spiritual love. This is when one looks at all things deeply and with respect and kindness. This love is the philosophy of people like Mother Theresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Ghandi. This love branches out to all people equally and has no prejudice. This kind of love successfully won the civil rights movement, has ended the cycle of violence, has rescued endangered animals and has inspired communities to help others who are in need. This love warms the heart and elevates the soul. This is the love of forgiveness. This is a love we should all strive towards. Not only does it make the world go round, it creates positive evolutions and higher states of awareness. It is the key to enlightenment and the true bliss we think we want when we are hit with love of infatuation, only spiritual love is not an illusion but universal truth, a profound realization and the highest goal of the soul. Like, committed love, it takes work, tending and commitment. It is something we do to make the world a better place, not something we are entitled to. This love is what keeps us from destroying each other as a species

I'm the Evil Twin. ;)

When I was in college, I dated a man who seemed to be obsessed with pagers. Pagers were all the rage back then but I didn't own one. He kept saying things like, what do you think of pagers? Aren't they annoying? Do you have one? You don't? Are you sure? It was the weirdest thing. He also kept asking me about my whole name and if it was a popular name in my native country.

When we came to the end of our romance, right before we broke up, he asked me sincerely if I was seeing someone else. When I told him I wasn't, he confessed that he had a friend who was dating a girl with my exact same name. He described her to look just like me and we went to the same college. He said the only difference was that his friend kept saying that this girl was "hot for his jock" and that his friend kept having to page her. "I don't have a pager," I said, finally realizing why he kept asking me about them. By then, I think he finally believed me but that didn't matter because I had lost interest in him. I'm not good with boys who beat around the bush and can't be direct. Apparently, this had been bothering him for a while.

But the real subject of this blog is my doppleganger, the other girl who looks just like me. I know she exists because people always go up to me asking if I was at some party or telling me they saw me at a store or gym where I never was. People I have never met before act as if they know me. My overactive writer's imagination has entertained the idea that I have a twin and we were separated at birth. Due to some error, we were both given the same name. My mother said that when I was born, she got discharged from the hospital as fast as she could. She said that babies with pale, pink skin like mine were rare. Someone suggested that maybe I really was stolen. Maybe my mother saw us twins and decided that it was too much for one mother to have and that should at least get to take me. I knew my twin was out there somewhere.

The other explanation is that I have split personality disorder and that I go out and do things without remembering. This is why people say they've seen me at places I haven't been and why I date guys I've never heard of. Its possible.

I do like the twin idea, though. My writer's imagination thinks of what I could do when I finally meet her. We could take a vacation from our lives and trade places like "The Prince and the Pauper." We could show up to functions we don't want to be at. We could make weird youtube videos and tell everyone we used technology to make it look like there was two of us when there really wasn't. I've entertained ideas of making love to my twin, to finally feel what its like to be with myself the way my lover describes it to me, to touch breasts that are just like mine and kiss lips that are just like mine. Oh what fun we would have together!

I can't really say I've made an effort to go out and look for her. A google search revealed to me that there are many woman with my exact same name and they all look a bit like me (Lacey Reah is my pen name) Still, its fun to imagine and maybe one day I can write a story about my split personality or my mischievous twin.  :D

An Early Memory of Compassion

One of the earliest memories I have is living in Manilla. I must have been less than 4 years old because that’s how old I was when my parents moved away. I remember there being many stray animals that we tried to bring inside but my parents always caught us and told us to get rid of them. My dad always claimed to be allergic to animals. I even remember hiding a kitten or puppy behind the couch but my mum yelled at me to get rid of it.

I remember the torrential downpours and thunderstorms, nothing like the dry weather we get in Southern California. I remember some newborn kittens lying in our porch. I remember there being two of them and they were wailing in the wet rain. They were so tiny, only inches long. My brother and I watched and I wanted to save them. I remember how desperately I wanted to save them but my parents strictly forbade it. I watched them suffer from the shelter of our door. My brother and I put a handkerchief or napkin on top of them and watched as it disintegrated in the rain. Eventually, our parents made us go to bed. When I came back the next day, the orphans were gone.

I can recall it as if it were yesterday, the feeling of being small and helpless. I know that compassion is innate. I felt it when I was so young. My sense of compassion and curiosity was bigger than fear and apprehension, though I learned to fear things a few years later--even animals. I recall the feeling of wanting to save something smaller than me, of wanting to nurture something, even though I was so small and helpless myself. But I couldn’t do it because there was a larger authority forbidding it. I went against all of my instincts because a larger authority told me “no” and I had to obey.

I was just a child. These days, I’ve quit jobs and risked my own reputation to do what I felt was right. I hate the feeling of helplessness. I’m an adult now. I don’t have to bow down to someone larger than me. I can do things for myself. Yet, I see it all the time, adults allowing bad things to happen because some authority figure tells them not to do anything. It happens in companies, clubs and in science experiments. Our greatest sin is our fear of judgement, of authority and of other people. Because of this fear, people get beaten, raped, cheated and killed. Witnesses stand by and watch helplessly when they could do something. They don’t. They’re afraid.

This is why I’ve made it such a point to conquer fear. Without courage, no other moral has value. Action takes courage. You can’t do what is right or what you want if you are afraid. You can say you are a good person as you watch your peer rape someone in front of you without the strength to stop them. Without courage, what good is that supposed goodness?

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.”

--Maya Angelou

I wrote another blog on this subject many years ago here:
http://laceyreah.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-would-you-do.html

No Dancing Allowed

I moved to New York City in 1997 without a penny to my name and with the fool notion I would get a job within a week and pay my way through school. I managed to succeed with a lot of hard work and very little sleep. Those were the golden years of the city. The internet boom was just about to start. Mayor Gulliani just came into office. The broken window policy was being enforced and crime rates were at an all time low. Meanwhile, the economy was getting better and time square was being transformed from a theatre district full of sex and strippers, to a tourist area with stores, restaurants and larger, more mainstream theaters, thanks to the Disneyfication of the area.

I witnessed a lot of alterations during those years. I still saw a lot of crime and homelessness but I saw a lot of excess and wealth as well. One memory that sticks out for me was the "No Dancing Allowed" rule that was starting to be implemented in bars and clubs everywhere. It sounds like a joke now and it sounded like one then as well. The city came up with a cabaret license and unless your club or bar owned one, dancing was strictly not allowed. There were "no dancing" signs posted everywhere. Some of them were very anti Gulliani. They stated, "no dancing allowed thanks to you know who."

I checked out one of these bars, which was known for its music and it had one of those anti Gulliani signs posted. The funny thing is, the music the bar was known for was New York swing music which is basically dance music. People started showing up to swing dance. They started swinging their arms and legs, grabbing their partners and twirling them around with furious glee. It was not your typical romantic dance, or even a fun dance. It was a rebellious dance. I saw staff members walk up to dancers and tell them to stop dancing, that it wasn't allowed. How did they respond? They danced faster, harder, in the face of all authority. It was fun to watch, fun to experience.

How, I wondered, can you put a license on dancing? How can you tax a person for tapping their feet or moving their hips? It was the most absurd law in my mind. Yet there it was; a law against dancing, smack dab in a world renown performing arts capital. Oh, and the rebels; they didn't protest calmly or march angrily. They danced hard, passionately, defiantly.

I can very much relate to F. Scott Fitzgerald's novella, "My Lost City." I lived in the ghetto, partied with the rich and watched the city go from rags to riches, to rags again. I only lived their for five years. By the year 2000, the economy was booming. Everyone had a job and everyone told me to take advantage of the good fortune while it lasted. By 2002, the market crashed badly and we had been bombed by terrorists. If New York had a personality, it would be Bi Polar. One day its gritty and poor, another artsy and rebellious. On one day its wealthy and opportunistic, another its retreating into fear and prejudice after the greatest terrorist attack that every hit the U.S. bombed thousands of its dwellers. I saw it happen but that's something else.

Before the darkness, there were good times, almost an innocent time -- if New York city could ever be thought of as innocent. I remember young, energetic people dancing hard and fast, rebel dancing over an absurd law. 

I Thought You Were Different

I remember this very well so it must be significant. I was at a college party where there was lots of music, pot and clicks. I can't say I felt entirely comfortable there. I sat down and started talking to some guests at the party and we formed a little circle. I think they felt as uncomfortable as I did at the seemingly entertaining milieu of the place, when really there wasn't anything interesting going on. I just wanted to talk to people who weren't just trying to look cool and for a brief moment, I found them. As the party progressed, I did something quite stupid, as we sometimes do when we are young. Then someone who I barely knew, someone who I just met at that party said to me, "I thought you were different."

It was a passing comment, something someone I can't even remember said in the middle of a very complicated night but I remember that most of all. I never took the time to ask myself why this was so significant until now. I remember feeling quite offended. Who was he to say he thought he knew me? He talked to me for maybe fifteen minutes at the most? I can't even remember what he had talked about, what his name was or what he looked like but I remember him saying that he thought I was different.

So today I'm wondering if a stranger could really "know" a person as he said he did. And who are we to say we are different? We are all special, yes, just like everyone else. Maybe I didn't want to be different or maybe I did. I never understood people who wanted to be like everyone else. I recall a line in a movie where the hero said that he just wanted to be like everyone else and the love interest said, "so you want to be petty and dishonest?"

Or perhaps what really got me was that this man who barely knew me turned out to be wrong. I did something to disappoint him. I wasn't different after all. How horrible is that? I was very embarrassed about what happened at that party but looking back, I doubt anyone really cared, except maybe for a good reason to gossip. Yet here was someone who barely knew me that I managed to disappoint. Could a perfect stranger care in this deep of a level? Maybe I care what people think of me after all. I thought I didn't. I didn't care what people thought because most people just want to judge or gossip but here was someone who thought I was different, who had expectations of me. He wasn't a parent or a teacher or any other authority figure, yet he had expectations. Why? Even now, as I use this subject as a thesis and as a focus of contemplation, I still don't get it.

I was raised to be very independent and growing up, I did everything on my own. I never thought it noble to care what other people thought. I have always had that John Wayne, cowboy, Wolverine mindset. Raw individuality always became me and its only now that I have a family, a business and a career that I see the importance of other people in our lives. Perhaps this is why I'm reflecting on what happened. Maybe its time for me to look back and see how my more mature self views what this young man said so long ago.

Maybe it does matter when someone sees something special in us. Maybe other people's expectations can make a difference. Maybe, looking back, I did get help along the way although I thought myself so independent. While I followed my heart, struck out on my own, payed my way through school and lived the dream, there were some people who encouraged me. There was my high school acting teacher who simply told me I was a genius. My high school English teacher told me I marched to my own drum. My boss who hired me even though most kids who were bum poor, paying their way through school dropped out and moved back home within a few months. When I told him I was having a hard time reaching some merchandise on the top shelf of the stock room, he simply said, "I don't think there's anything you can't do." I didn't care much for my boss, but I'll never forget that he said that. I remember when someone says that I am the person I want to be and I guess it does mean something now, when my clients tell me I've changed them for the better. So, when I disappointed this young stranger at a party, I guess I never forgot that either. Truth is, I disappointed myself. I am different... but we are not our mistakes. We are who ever we want ourselves to be and we have to keep reminding ourselves of this.

My Neighbors Don't Make Love No More, and other poems

I spend a lot of time going from place to place and sometimes I have a moment to write a quick poem here and there. Here are a few, some comical, some philosophical, others reflective.

My neighbors don't make love no more.
Can't hear them moan beyond the door.
Or the rattling of their rusty bed,
Sending daydream pornos through my head.
They're still together.
Maybe its the weather.
I see them cross the veranda as they walk.
I sometimes even see them talk.
But why do they make love no more?
Why don't I ever hear her roar?
Across the thin, earthquake proof walls,
Across the wooden apartment stalls.
I don't know what to say.
I do hope they're okay.
Or maybe its just all in my head.
Perhaps they simply moved the bed.
--Lacey Reah

And for something completely different and more Zen-like:

Nothing is permanent
Nothing temporary
We are made of the same stuff
Ever changing
Never dying
Always striving, shining, crying
--Lacey Reah

I was pretty stressed and busy. Then I had a minute between gigs and wrote this on a notepad:

Babes and teens
Bosses and dollars
people and the masks they wear
Juggling clients
Just trying to get there
Cars and buildings
Pollution in the big city
With a palm tree
Here and there
Life happens
but the birds keep cawing
And vermin scatter
From here to there
We adapt somehow
To the crowds and noise
To the daily stress
We think will drive us insane
My thirty second vacation
A bird on a branch
The sky above me
And the gentle relief
When I hear you laugh
A soothing balm to my pain
--Lacey Reah

A quick observation I made, I do hate seeing my single friends struggle every year around the same time:

Today is Friday the 13
Tomorrow Valentines Day
I watch in awe
As my single friends
Grow more and more
Psycho
--Lacey Reah

Giving credit to my best friend:

Oh diary, my diary
my ode to you
Friends come and go 
But you remain true
--Lacey Reah

What Will the Modern Faerie Tale Be?

The original Grimm's fairy tales were Grim indeed and highly criticized for their far too adult nature. Snow White was raped by the seven dwarfs. Sleeping beauty was penetrated by the prince and gave birth in her sleep, then she was deceived and tortured by the Prince's real wife.

In the original novel, "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame," which I read when I was in high school, Esmarelda is hanged. Her love interest is already betrothed to another woman and he ends up marrying someone else. Again, the beautiful Ingenue is doomed.

In Hans Christian Anderson's "A Little Mermaid," the mermaid loses. The prince marries someone else and because she refuses to kill him, as the sea witch demands in exchange for her life, the Little Mermaid dissolves into the air.

None of these heroine's live happily ever after. The lesson to young women seemed to be that life is harsh. Love hurts and you don't always get the man you love. Many of Grimm's fairy tales showed the cruelty of men and wolves and how girls who journey outside the comfort of their homes have nothing but hardship ahead of them.

The 20th century ushered in a new age where these fairy tales were softened in order to relieve children from nightmares and inspire them to a gentler type of magic where the lines between good and evil became clearer. The Princes all became charming and nice. It was the age of being a gentleman and young girls would dream of how prince charming would  rescue them from a world of cruelty.

Yet, what gets me about this era is how the heroines still needed a man to save them from their miserable situations and this ushered in a generation of women who, though they wouldn't always accept abuse as the way of the world, they did have a new version of romance. These girls were led to believe that they couldn't be happy until they found that perfect man. That  man would be a prince, already well to do and perfect in every other way. She will be looking for this ideal in a man, expecting him to sweep her off her feet and save her from whatever kind of life she wanted to walk away from. Snow white, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella were helpless without their prince but he would eventually reward them for being kind, submissive and gentle. As long as they didn't ruffle anyone else's feathers, they would be rewarded by a man who would rescue them because they were "nice."

One of the last great renditions of a fairie tale from this era was Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" which was released in 1991, near the end of the millennium. This movie shows us one of the best renditions of Stockholm syndrome I've ever seen. Bell's father is kidnapped by a beast but she offers him to take her instead. Although the beast can be cruel, she sees his softer side and falls in love with him. As sweet as this movie was, one can't help thinking, is Disney saying that its romantic to fall in love with one's kidnapper?

I look at the 20th century as a time when women were expected to be submissive and unable to solve their own problems without waiting for a man to come along. To me Cinderella is the epitome of this ideal. You have a woman who is treated unfairly and abused by her step mother and sisters. She is too "nice" to stand up for herself but is luckly enough to have a fairy Godmother save her so she can find a Prince to marry her. Why can't Cinderella just leave and find a job? Why doesn't she just stand up for herself? Instead, she does what an adult friend once advised me to never do when I was a teenager. She went from the frying pan into the fire. She used a man to get her out of her situation.
The fairy tales of the 20th century seemed to say that women will always be slaves to their situations and nothing without a man in their life.

This helplessness doesn't become apparent until someone from a different generation takes a note of it. Just as people living in today's culture are shocked and offended by the original violent fairy tales of the Brother's Grimm, children of today's generation are starting to find the fairy tales of the 20th century a bit strange. At a time when the bad ass woman is getting all the glory, the classic princesses are losing their appeal.

A while back, I rented the movie, "A Princess Bride," a brilliant classic fairy tale full of sword fights, great dialogue and love. While my son did love the movie, he was frustrated with the princess. "Why is she so weak?" he asked. "Why doesn't she help the man fight that giant rat? Why is she incapable of using that stick?"
This is coming from a boy who's mother studies martial arts and who's role model was Sarah Conner from "The Terminator Saga."

Thank God! I say. We must raise our children with self empowering ideals. Just as men are raised with classic virtues of knighthood, shouldn't women start learning to be strong and be the change they wish to see in the world? Aren't women just as capable as men of changing their circumstance and being heroes? What happens to a woman who depends on a man for everything? What if the man can't do it all? What if the Prince turns out to be a troll? What if he dies? What if her relationships aren't based on real love and respect, but on dependency and desperation? Are we to teach out daughters that their only option is to dwell in darkness until their prince saves them? Are we to live in a society where populations of women are unable to contribute but sit idly by? The ingenues of today's fairy tales are helping to slay the dragons. They have drive, spunk and courage. They don't wait for things to change. They look for solutions. I like to think that today's woman doesn't get her self confidence from feeling "pretty" but from being a total bad ass.