Part 1: Into the Forest
Excuse me while I pick up the shards of my last failed experiment in the laboratory of love. Fortunately, it was a small explosion, what I now refer to fondly as a learning lesson where no one was badly injured. Of course, as shards were flying and the extent of damage unknown, mid-explosion was not a fond moment. It was terrifying.
"violent, often terrifying to both persons involved,
a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.”
That's how Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist and feminist, talks about love and says we have to earn the "right to use the word love."
Earn the right to use the word love. Interesting thought about one of the most overused and least understood words in the English language. We "love" everything: pickles, pizza, Porsches. Shiny red "hearts" are everywhere, looking nothing like the actual organ they honor, and basically meaning nothing.
Thus, LOVE, perhaps the most transformative power in existence, is reduced to an emoji ... which, by the way, was spawned by the novelist Vladimir Nabokov who thought there should be a written symbol for a smile. A couple of decades later a computer scientist created emoticons which morphed into emojis and contributed to the flood of tiny symbols replacing words, replacing actual experiences of meaningful emotion, creating mere ghosts of the original.
But, I digress. Back to the failed experiment. Years after having explored the normal avenues of love ... dating (online and off), affairs (tepid to torrid), and marriages (divorce to death), a new path appeared, wandering crookedly off into a dark wood. A sign said: Intentional Friendship Forest this way. "Hmmm ...," I said and stepped onto the path.
"Friendship," I thought, rather ignoring the intentional part, "been there. Safe." From the bushes around me, I thought I heard giggling. "Just the leaves rustling," I mused and continued on, thinking about friends past and present, enjoying the gentle breezes outside the stuffy and scary laboratory of love. This wasn't about real love, just friendship ... uncomplicated, comfortable, friendship.
In the metaphorical world of love, romantic love ... copulation, courtship, coupledom, marriage ... is the prancing show horse, all beribboned and shiny, while friendship is the sweaty workhorse with barn muck on his shoes. We give friendship a pat on our way to the big arena, the real show of balloon-festooned and capital-lettered LOVE.
We call our partners in the big arena: spouse, husband, wife, lover, paramour, life partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, darling, sweetheart, beloved. Without such a partner, we call ourselves: single. We think of ourselves as "alone." The supportive playmates and people of our lives, the workhorses, are simply deemed "friends," to be counted in numbers on our Facebook profile.
I wandered aimlessly onto the forest path and after awhile, met another wanderer who was cute, interesting and interested. Conversation flowed. Trust grew. Soon though, confusion grass sprouted, grew tall, obscured the path. "This can't be friendship," I thought. "This must be love ... real love, happily ever after stuff." I began to weave cloud fantasies into future castles.
Not long thereafter, the overheated beaker exploded.
(to be continued)
Part 2: The Candy Store
As I cleaned up the fallout from my failed love experiment, I began to find clues. From the debris I found a fragment from the beaker that looked like it had been cracked before the explosion; a Google search revealed the explosive nature of the contents of the beaker and also that the bunsen burner had been set too high. And, worst of all, an evaluation of me, the bespectacled lab rat, found me grossly undereducated and following a recipe yellowed with age.
In the midst of the burnt chaos, I found a candy wrapper, still crinkly and bright, and completely out of place in the charred mess. Suddenly, I remembered the weird candy store, just inside the tangled Intentional Friendship Forest. I had only been on the path a short while when I saw it glowing in the distance, lit sweetly with twinkling Kinkade cottage lights, drawing me in. Beguiling music drifted through the aisles where tables were laden with heart-shaped treats and signs read, "take me," "happiness here," "you deserve it."
Holding a lab beaker in my hand, I had started picking this and that. Of course I wanted connection, and three servings of intimacy, please. I grabbed bags of conversation and comfort mixed with appreciation and magical promises of hugs and kisses, stuffing my beaker with abandon, not noticing the hairline crack that appeared as I shoved expectations and fairy tale fantasies into the mix.
When I had paused for just a moment to see what else I wanted, I noticed two gnomes sitting in a corner nodding their approval. One held up a copy of Sam Keen's book To Love and Be Loved, pointing to the words: "LOVE has become the secular equivalent of the Holy Grail -- the magic treasure that should save us."
I had suddenly known that love was exactly what I needed.
Then I saw the other gnome hold up Anam Cara by John O'Donohue and words tumbled into my mind: "LOVE is absolutely vital for human life. For LOVE alone can awaken what is divine within you. In LOVE, you grow and come home to yourself. When you learn to LOVE and to let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit."
"YES! That's it," I had cried, snatching up the books and stuffing them into my backpack along side my overflowing beaker and beelining it back to the laboratory, on an alchemical mission.
There, I grabbed the promised sure-fire recipe, poured the words from the books into the fuel line, stirred the sugary concoction together with hopes and wishes found in the debris pile of my past, as well as the rumored promises of a happily ever after future, and lit the fire.
You already know what happened after that. The explosion singed my eyebrows, blew me backwards, and sent glass splinters flying, some of which stung a gentle soul who was standing by just trying to help.
It took days to clean up the mess and I wasn't sure I wanted to try another experiment any time soon, so I wandered outside, feeling lost and alone, and found myself once again at that pathway leading to the Intentional Friendship Forest. I didn't intend to go that way again but I saw a little sign I had missed before. It read: "Turn left at the candy store. Do not enter: dangerous."
"No problem," I thought. "Definitely not going there again."
I started to turn around when I saw one of the gnomes. I wanted to throw a rock at him, but he held up a yellow daffodil in one hand and another copy of Anam Cara in the other. One word glowed so brightly I could read it clearly: FRIENDSHIP. I squinted and more came into focus:
"Real FRIENDSHIP or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. FRIENDSHIP is always an act of recognition."
"What does that mean?" I cried, but the gnome disappeared into the forest. I had no choice but to follow him; I had to know what those words meant.
I ran and ran until I could run no more and then sat on a rock. I wanted to cry. The forest was dark and I was lost and scared, alone. A branch snapped, startling me and then I heard a voice.
"I wondered if I would find you here."
(to be continued)
I jumped up, startled, and then recognized the wanderer from my first trip into the forest.
"You! What are you doing here?"
"Just wandering the Intentional Friendship path."
"What does that mean?
Shrugging, the wander said, "Not sure. Maybe we'll find out if we keep going."
I stood up, looked around and thought "Why, not? I'm already lost. Maybe this will be an adventure."
We walked on, this way and that, accompanied only by birdsong and a little conversation. My feet grew sore and my heart ached from failure and disappointment. Finally we came to a rise where we could see mountains in the distance and a charming blue lake with a picnic table at the edge.
"We can rest there."
I nodded and walked on, invited by the clear lake, shimmering against the mountains. When I sat down at the table, I noticed a brass plaque inscribed with the words:
"Without doubt, we desire love, dream about it,
are disappointed by its absence,
and become angry when it vanishes."
-- Sam Keen
"LOVE! What does love even mean? I'm not sure I even know anymore. How can it mean anything when we say we love rainbows as easily as we say we love our children? We don't have enough words."
"Actually, there are plenty of words, a kaleidoscope of words. We've just gotten lazy using the words we have. Think about it, we could say I enjoy spending time with you, or I'm fond of you, or I'd like to know you better, ... or even, like the Na'vi in the movie Avatar ... say it: 'I see the love and your feelings and your soul and you mean everything to me.'"
"That's really beautiful. But, why does love just go poof or explode like that beaker in the laboratory. I know I followed that recipe perfectly."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the gnome again, running and tearing pages out of a book as he scampered away. "He's amazingly fast for someone on such short legs," I thought as I caught one of the pages.
"Oh, look, it's Maya Angelou." I called out and read: 'There’s a marked difference between acquaintances and friends. Most people really don’t become friends. They become deep and serious acquaintances. But in a friendship you get to know the spirit of another person; and your values coincide.'”
"Here's one from John O'Donohue, 'the wish for friendship develops rapidly but friendship does not.' Friendship takes time. Love builds on friendship. We just rush things."
I nodded. "That makes sense. And look, here's another O'Donohue, 'Friendship awakens affection. The heart learns a new art of feeling.' That sounds like what you're saying. Who is he anyway?"
"Irish poet/philosopher. Died too young. Listen to this one. It's George Eliot, 'Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.'"
"Love that one," I said, picking up another sheet, "And, here's C.S. Lewis, 'Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art ... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.'
Gives value to survival ... that's amazing. How come there's all this wisdom floating around and yet, love experiments are still exploding?"
"Do you know where we are?"
"Of course," I replied. "We're in the Intentional Friendship Forest."
"See anyone else here?"
I looked around. We were alone. No one on the path. No one sitting at the other picnic tables around the lake. No sounds other than the gentle waves on the shore and a mallard calling from across the lake.
"You think ... you think they all stopped at the candy store?" I asked.
"Could be. Maybe we should keep following ..."
"... the Intentional Friendship path? I wonder where that would take us?"
"Could be interesting."
It read:
Intentional friendship is based on mutual respect and shared commitment to each other's growth and well-being. It is friendship with purpose, on purpose.
Signposts for building intentional friendships:
- purposeful in their interactions
- spending time together
- focusing on protecting the friendship and each other
- nurturing the friendship
- being present
- asking questions
- staying open and vulnerable
- honesty
- sharing their stories
- respecting boundaries
- giving and seeking forgiveness
- making memories
- avoiding expectations, both personal and cultural
- showing gratitude
- laughing together
The end.
Lovely story! I've published my first (but not last) thoughts on this same subject
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