Notes to Myself (Who's That?)

I have often written about my need for solitude (I think I've written about it). What I don't know is what it's like to live with me, or with someone who wants to be alone. I obviously don't want to be alone, or I wouldn't be in a relationship. I've been in relationships for most of my adult life. Two long relationships, one 12 years long, and my current one 9 1/2 years and counting.

So I have to ask myself why would I go into a relationship if I wanted to be alone? Well, wanting solitude is not synonymous with wanting to be alone. Well, yeah, actually it is. Hence, one of the major contradictions (of which there are many) of my life. So, again, the question of why?

Well, maybe I am mislabeling, or misdescribing my need. I can't say I want someone who doesn't talk at all, I would have chosen someone deaf who only knows sign language or I would have chosen partners who are quiet and non-communicative. Instead, I have chosen the opposite. My 2 long term relationships have been with people with very similar personalities. Both bright, educated, articulate, very talkative ADDers who verbalize every thought that comes into their mind. Is it that I feel more alive or become more introverted as a result, that I like and need? Am I more self reflective because I need to retreat into myself to get quiet time? Do opposites really attract and that is my opposite? Would I fold up into a ball if left to my solitude? I can't say.

I know in the past I didn't but then I have to look at the fact that the periods in my life when I did live alone I spent much of my time seeking social contacts and being on the hunt. I can always humor myself with "I was so much younger than," or that was my "pre-Buddhist" days (not sure how that would make a difference). But I still have a tendency to "fill my time," when I get time alone. I make lunch and dinner dates, social committments in advance of a period of pending aloneness. I am not afraid of being alone as I once was. I'm not sure where the impulse comes from.

It's a stange thing. Seeking aloneness when not alone; seeking company when alone. I have no answers. This has been on my mind for a while. Just questioning my patterns of behavior. Trying to find the source of my impulses. I'm trying to align who I think I am with how I live my life. I'm not sure how I live will be the part that changes, or needs changing. Perhaps it is just what I think that needs to change. Or how I think it should be that needs to change.

Wondering

Is there a truth more honest than...I have to pee right now?

When I think...I wish I knew what I wanted...Who am I talking to?

Dear Diary, how come you never write back?

2 Quotes I Like

Just as the word chariot is merely a means of expressing how axle, body, wheel, and poles are brought together in a certain relationship, but when we look at each of them one by one there is no chariot in an absolute sense; and just as the word house is a way of expressing how wood and other materials stand in relationship to each other in a certain space, but in the absolute sense there is no house; and just as the word fist is an expression for the finger and thumb in relationship, and tree for trunk, branches, leaves, and so on, but in an absolute sense there is no fist or tree--in exactly the same way the words living entity and person are but ways of expressing the relationship of body, feeling, and consciousness, but when we come to examine the elements of being, one by one, we find there is no entity there. In the absolute sense there is only name and form and the mystery which they express. Such ideas as "I" and "I am" are not absolute.

~ Visuddhi Magga, From "The Pocket Buddha Reader," edited by Anne Bancroft

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

~ Ernest Hemingway