Monday, March 1, 2010

Settling revisited (3)

After I finally dumped S, I wanted to spend some time just having a good time. While doing so I met the Serpentine One. It was an unsettling experience.

As I started falling in love with her I had all the usual experiences. The magic, the feeling of wondering if it was just me, the whole pleasurable torture. But I also experienced something else: I wasn't sure I was good enough for her.

When we fall in love we present ourselves to someone. Time we spend falling in love is one of the few times when talking about ourselves at length is acceptable. And we present two selves, usually without being conscious of doing so. One self is who we believe we are and the other self is the person we want to be.

I could see that the Serpentine One was a person of enormous moral integrity. I could see that she was brave and committed to truth in a way that meant much more than that she didn't lie. That was intimidating enough. What was more intimidating was that I could see that her entire life was a project to develop her character in that direction.

This was unsettling because I had settled. I had settled for being good enough. After being unsettled I wanted to share her project—a project that resonated with me because I remembered having one like it years before. To allow myself to fall further in love with her without making that commitment would have been to betray her. From the very start, this was a different kind of love.

One of the things that made all this clear was that the Serpentine One would occasionally ask if we were doing the right thing. Are we/you really ready to do this, she asked in a greasy spoon one afternoon when we were just starting to fall in love. And she would have been willing to give up all the thrills and joys of falling in love if she hadn't thought our answers were good enough. That is an act of courage most of us aren't willing to make. Most of us think, I'll fall in love and I'll get out if it doesn't work. The Serpentine One wasn't going to fall any further in love unless it was clear that we both were really committed to living the right kind of love. That was scary. It was also the best thing that has ever happened to me.

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