A May Day

“Are you Single?”

“Are you Gay?”

“Are you Working?”


If Lisa’s interrogation technique isn’t just hitting the nail on the head I don’t know what would describe single life in 2008 better. I’m referring of course to the movie “P.S. I Love you”. (Quite honestly the most significant film to come out of Hollywood in quite a while, but I’ll review it elsewhere, later)

I have had several conversations with people lately, and completely unintentionally, have run across a general feeling of resigned indifference among those I spoke with in regard to their level of hope when it comes to finding someone.

How things change when you wake up and find yourself over forty and single.

It is such a head spin really.

It seems as though as people we all find ourselves slowly outgrowing those things in our life which have held us back. Ironic really. Although we may dread the thought of attempting to define our lives in a manner other than who we spend it with, who we love or who loves us, it is at that precise moment of clarity when the pressure of making a perceived deadline expires in our life, that we are finally freed from constrictive vision.

Separations are difficult. There are moments, to be sure, of extreme distress, but over time things become a little more desensitized. People say that time heals all wounds, but what they REALLY mean is, time will grind away your need to care about the things that you cannot control or understand with the efficiency of a power sander.

I think one of the most difficult aspects of a separation is that when we love someone, REALLY love them. We have a tendency to define our world around them. When they are gone, our world collapses. The foundation upon which everything is built is destroyed. First we have to learn to live again. Then we have to rebuild our world, sometimes completely from the ground up.

The aging process just accelerates and modifies these processes.

How do we build our lives in the first place?

We live in life's fun-house hall of mirrors.

We learn about ourselves when we see ourselves reflected in others. How they see us shows us what we are like. The more consistent the feedback we get from larger numbers of people, the more we integrate those perceptions as part of what we actually are.

We define ourselves by what we do. Who we love. Who knows us. Who loves us. Our position in a group of friends. Our position in the pecking order at work. Our position in our church. The relationships that we share with our neighbors. Even our relationships with our own and our neighbors pets. All of these mirrors help us to see ourselves. We define ourselves by the mirrored reflection of ourselves that we see in others eyes.

In a loving caring community of people, these mirrors can be helpful. Like playing with a chemistry set, we mix our personality with other personalities and create reactions of all different kinds. Some of these reactions we take pleasure in. Some of the reactions are unfavorable.
But we learn from all the experiences equally. This helps shape an image in our minds about who we really are. It helps us to define the difference between ourselves and others. From this we define our personal worlds.

In a fragmented community where people are more self serving than loving, more opportunistic than supportive, or more suspicious than open, the safety net of love is not present. Destruction reigns over Love.
All parties lose.

Then, there are those who, like myself, were born to a crippling shyness which prevented interaction with other people. I did not have the consistency of community reflection. I could not therefore see myself. An incredibly vicious cycle whose teeth tore at me for many long years, and whose scars still cross my heart to this very day. I could not enter into a group of people because I could not face not knowing who those people saw. My desire to be accepted outweighed my need to be seen in any certain way. I integrated too much of what others perceived (incorrectly) about me. As I look back, I begin to see why.


I attended five high schools in four years. I did not feel connected enough to attend high school prom. I was forced by circumstance to learn to survive without a solid self image. I learned instead to become a mirror. My friendships were sparse and often very intense as a result of those friends giving me the love I would normally have received from a larger number of people. These people were incredibly strong in character to reach beyond the silver lining of my highly reflective surface, to reach deeper in......to find me.

Those people literally, saved my life. I will never be able to fully express the depth of my gratitude and love, for all of you. You have been my lovers and my best friends. You have shared what you have seen in me, WITH me, and by your efforts have helped me to finally understand a measure of who I am. You have helped shape me into what I am today.

So now, at the incredible age of 43, (can you say late bloomer anyone?)
I finally can turn from a past where unrelenting pain and sorrow has been my lifelong companion, and look forward. I will look forward through my past until I can get to my present, and then I will look beyond.

I will not fear living a life of solitude any longer. It is time for me to realize that I have “been there, DONE that”. If I wind up living a life of solitude, then that is what I will have, and it will be good. After a very long time of contemplating the whole life thing, all I can say to anyone feeling similarly is this. Maybe I have been looking at this all wrong. Maybe I am not here.....for myself. Maybe I am here for others. From this perspective I can rest assured that my life will have meaning. For as I will raise all those around me who desire to integrate my influence, of my love and support, my life will come to have meaning. My existence will be understandable to me, my passage through this world will come into sharp focus.


I ..........Will ...........Love.


The Spirit and the Will come together.
The Divine enters into equal partnerships, and the trinity becomes A-parent.

I will no longer wait for my love to find me. I will instead love those around me. I will no longer search in vain for my love, for my love has been here all along, waiting, to be expressed. Waiting patiently for me to learn that unconditional love, is just that. Instead of being selective and compartmentalizing my love, I will share it, universally.


So I see that this May Day is more about potential and less about dis-stress. More about acceptance and less about fear. More about hope and less about tears.