Companionship

Who knows your truth? With whom do you share your life experiences openly and honestly? Where do you turn for honest criticism?

As we emerge from the dark age of the Bush administration in America, it seems interpersonal relationships have regressed in quality on some levels and progressed in others. The advent of Facebook and Linkedin have perhaps diminished isolation for the more socio-phobic. However, the level of intimacy in these virtual communities is inhibited by the constraints of the new hypocrisies about sexuality and gender roles. Leftovers from the born-again days.

This is also a post-psychological era in many ways. Drug companies have subverted psychotherapy as a method of personal growth and understanding. Alcohol abuse and alcoholism are once again epidemic on college campuses and in the lives of young working adults in urban areas. Drug abuse is also commonplace on all levels of society.

The stretch to intimacy in relationships is inhibited by the sense in many circles that "getting along" in groups is crucial. This breeds stagnation and conformity in such groups. Creative relationships wither in this atmosphere, where gossip and peer pressure are governed by mediocrity, political correctness (hypocrisy) and jealousy.

Trusting, committed companionship between two or more people is a precious asset in life, which can transform and sustain lives of creativity and expansion. Honesty in such relationships is key. Respect of personal differences and individual autonomy is also essential.

The current obsession in American society is finding The One. It seems absurd to see this stated by someone on Facebook who lists over 1,000 people as their friends. If I were to have 1,000 friends and had yet to find The One, I would logically assume I am not looking very hard, or that The One is not really whom I'm after. In fact, I would begin to think I was perhaps content with The None.

This brings me back to my original questions. The answers to these questions may vary. For some, the person most intimately involved in his/her day-to-day may be someone on a computer thousands of miles away. While relationships of this kind can be remarkably sustaining on an intellectual level, they do not provide the touch and hugs of affection which most human beings relish and need to feel loved.

At another extreme, the person most intimately involved with a person's life may be a sexual partner who is not even part of that person's day-to-day. The mistress or the sex buddy may know more about his companion than anyone else in his companion's life. This is not as uncommon as conventional morality would lead us to believe.

Integrating intimacy and companionship is the skill of a mentally healthy adults. It entails commitment on some level, occasional failure and creativity. The result is greatly nourishing. The rewards eventually outweigh the effort. True companionship with intimacy makes our lonely path from birth to death less arduous and more joyful.

Vulnerability

I recently had a renewed contact with a man, whom I will call Ted. I had an unusual relationship with Ted nearly twenty years ago. I had met his partner in a social situation. His partner and I became intimate friends for a couple of years. Then the partner died of AIDS.

I met Ted when he came to the hospice where I was working. His partner, my friend, came there to die, as one of my patients. Ted visited nearly daily for short periods. I was told he was incapable of caring for our dying friend, even though they had lived together for about ten years. This struck me as odd at the time, because Ted, who was perhaps in his late thirties, seemed healthy and was still working at a high-paying job, which entailed travel. In fact, Ted was a weight-lifter and sported a very muscular physique. He seemed to be socially popular and had many friends.

As a hospice nurse, I had learned that institutional care is better than home care in some circumstances. I simply accepted that this was one such situation. Our dying friend was blind and demented from his disease. He was gentle and childlike. He died in a matter of weeks. I last saw him just hours before his death.

I contacted Ted recently when I saw his ad on line for volunteer help to read to him. Ted too is now blind and lives alone. When I responded to the ad, I revealed who I am and how we had previously known one another. I suggested that I could read for him, if he needed help, as his ad indicated.

Ted's reply stunned me. He said he had no memory of who I had been in his past. His partner, our friend whose memory is still very present to me, had died so long ago, Ted said, that he really doesn't remember much about it. Ted explained that his life had been so busy and active since then. In fact, he had a regular group of readers who read for him. Finally, he said he had several other respondents to his recent ad, but he was willing to consider me as a helper. He recommended that I call him another day. I suppose I may be interviewed and rejected.

This interaction is not unusual to me, as someone who has worked for many years with people in distress and their family systems. Yet, each time it happens I am astounded at the willingness of people to remain invulnerable to intimacy or human connection, even when they themselves are in great distress and need. Their need to be in control trumps their need for mindful intimacy and compassion.

As a male in a society which is violent and alienating much of the time, I have had to struggle with my own resistance to vulnerability. Letting people in is very difficult when you have been conditioned to value self-control over intimacy. Learning to walk the middle path between co-dependency and invulnerability in relationships has been part of my practice in life. It requires mindfulness, compassion and a measure of meditative detachment. The result, I believe, is the development of healthier relationships with other human beings and a healthier relationship with myself.

Idols

I just got off the phone from a conversation with my friend, Joyce. I want to share the wonder of Joyce with you.

Joyce, who lives alone on Cape Cod, is eighty-two. She's a seamstress and a local socialite. She takes town meetings seriously and never passes up a chance to meet someone new. She has been a rare grandmother who sadly survived the death of her own beautiful grandson over a decade ago.

I first met Joyce in 1986. I had moved to Provincetown that Fall. I was in transition in my life. I commuted back and forth to Boston for two days a week for work on a Honda CB650 motorcycle, but I lived in a tiny one-room cottage in Joyce's garden.

Joyce, who is somewhat diminutive, looked up at me on the day we met, after I had dismounted my motorcycle in her driveway. I saw deep perceptiveness in her blue eyes. I had answered an ad in the newspaper for her rental cottage. She showed me the cottage. She said I could have it. I moved in the following week.

By the following year, I was living in New York, where I moved to work in AIDS hospice care. But, Joyce, who had lived for decades in Manhattan in the prime of her life, stayed in my thoughts. We had become friends quickly.

Over the following 8 years, I visited Joyce regularly. She was kind enough to put me up at times. I sometimes house-sat for her while she was off on her world travels. Traveling is her passion. I was lucky enough to be part of her life. I got to know her two daughters. I watched her grandson, who was born with a serious birth defect, grow up in a loving and nurturing family. I stood by in grief when he died. There have been few times in my life that equal simple suppers at Joyce's kitchen table. She and I can talk for hours.

In 1995, I was told I could die in 6 months. And indeed, after 6 months I could not maintain my life in my city house. I was crippled with shortness of breath and exhaustion. The stress of being in the city and the knowledge that I was deteriorating was a daily torture. None of my friends or family seemed forthcoming and willing to see me through the worst of it, which seemed to be fast approaching.

One evening, I was speaking with Joyce on the phone. She was obviously disturbed by how I sounded. Eventually, she said, "Well, my cottage, your old cottage, is vacant. Why don't you sell your house and come here and live in my garden?" I wept immediately. A great weight was lifted from my chest. I said, "But, Joyce, I'm dying. I wouldn't want to..." Joyce interrupted me, "I know. I know what I'm doing. You put that house on the market. I'll be up next week and help you bring what you want down here." And she came and she did.

I did very nearly die that year in Provincetown. I woke one morning at 3 AM unable to breathe. Weeks followed in hospitals. Months of IV treatments followed that. I needed a walker to cross the eight feet of living room to the bathroom in my little cottage. But, I endured and survived. Despite my disgust at the profiteering of the pharmaceutical industry, it has saved my life more than once.

Through it all, Joyce brought me soup, sat with me at supper time, called me on the phone several times a day. She was the best of human beings to me. When I decided to move back to Boston eventually to be closer to the medical care I would need, Joyce never flinched in her friendship and openness. We have remained solid friends and have never had an angry argument.

Joyce is my American Idol. She is the model of what I consider a humanist to be. She would dismiss this as foolishness, which, of course, would only strengthen my opinion of her. Joyce is the rare human being whose vision of her own way through the world is always crisp and resilient. Despite her many challenges, she opens her eyes and her heart to each new day with the same energy and curiosity. This is true strength. This is what I aspire to become in my own daily practice as a humanist and a human being.

Texting

I recently had an experience which baffled me. An old friend posted a comment on my first essay for The New Humanism, a journal of the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy. She was good enough to email me to alert me to her dissatisfaction with the comment on retrospection. When I read the comment, I was stunned. It didn't read at all like her, as I have known her for about 25 yrs..

The comment has been removed with her consent. I have processed my initial feelings of disappointment and anger at the glibness of the comment in the context of a journal, which I highly respect as a serious forum for Humanism. The whole experience has made me think quite a bit.

It seems we are all becoming sloppy with our speech in print. That is, with texting and Facebook-ing day in and day out, our communication is becoming too immediate and uninhibited in general. This is one of very few situations which have effected me in this way, but I hear stories quite regularly in media about cyber-bullying and bad communication in new media. More contact, less quality. I feel the pull of it, the challenge to be who I am with one line.

My own style of writing is frequently criticized in on line situations. I have been told I am too formal, too stuffy, cold, too intellectual, too uptight, etc.. I have stopped frequenting chatroom situations because of this and have no intention of embracing Twitter.

There are reasons why I write as I do. I began my schooling with severe dyslexia in a Roman Catholic school in 1955, when Catholic nuns saw dyslexia as a sign of the devil. I spent many hours crying in a closed coat closet at the back of my first grade classroom. This unintentionally Skinnerian method scared me into reading from left to right eventually. I learned to slow down and ignore the mockery of my classmates as I picked through the words through restrained sobs.

Later on, I had two pen pals. One in Australia and one in France. They were wonderfully encouraging tutors. The girl in Australia, who planned to be a nurse, gave me my first compliment as a writer. She wrote that she waited every week for my letters and saved them to read at night before she went to sleep. My French correspondent, who wrote to me to learn English, gave me confidence by allowing me to explain English idioms to him and coach his study of my language. Since I was useless at French, this was a true gift: I learned that I could communicate intelligently with someone in another culture without having to be discouraged by my deficiency in their language.

My pre-medical course in college was grueling for me. It was a bad fit, but my parents urged me on for their sake. In my sophomore year, I desperately wanted to be an English Literature major. I was immature and seventeen. I allowed myself to be talked out of it by my parents. My English Literature professor at the time became quite upset and ignored me for the rest of the time I was at that campus. In a strange way, I took his anger as a compliment.

The years have given birth to a series of personal journals with diary entries, poetry and short stories. I am a writer. I have been since an early age, but I have only been able to say that I am a writer with confidence for the last several years.

Now I find writing is becoming casual speech, and casual speech is corrupting writing, in my opinion.

I know I am definitely not the first 60-year-old who has felt like a stranger on a strange planet. But, I am not happy or comfortable feeling that way. I want to be in tempo with the Zeitgeist. I try to maintain an interest in expanding and changing technologies.

I guess I have found a boundary which I do not wish to cross. 'It's all good' has never been my slogan, because it isn't all good. Some of it is pretty awful. I will continue practicing considered, honest and mindful speech to the best of my ability. Whether by mouth or by keyboard. It is who I want to be and who I continue to try to become.

Thaw

This winter in New England has been long and cold. The earth recently thawed somewhat. The piles of snow have melted for the most part. I saw the large planter in my yard for the first time since December this week. I realized that the revelation of all the hidden constants on my small piece of property stimulated me to feel excitement and a great sense of comfort. Winter will pass. Spring will come.

The practice of forgiveness in relationships elicits much the same response in me. When I can get to that forgiveness or feel that forgiveness coming to me from someone else, I am refreshed and liberated from the darkness that comes with stored anger and resentment. This is an ongoing mutual process in some of my relationships. And, those relationships which never move from anger to forgiveness are frozen beneath a glacier of indifference.

Learning to expand practice to mindfully dealing with inevitable unpleasantness in daily life is key to personal development. Forgiveness is one way to deal with one's own anger. Forgiveness in you may well inspire forgiveness in those whom you may offend.

Things

I recently moved some things in my house. This set off a wave of moving more and more things. The house is small, and I have an acute sense of decorative balance. I am, after all is said and done, a gay man.

Where did I get all these things? The answer is simple. My eye is the culprit. If I see something that resonates with me and is cheap, I buy it. This is why I usually avoid all retail venues passionately. It is also why I love to give things away, when they seem to match a possible recipient. The flow of things prevents the weightiness of things to some degree.

When I was young, I accumulated people in much the same way. I suppose, in my youthful stupidity, I viewed people much the same way as I viewed things.

My practice now includes care and mindfulness in the collection of things. And, in a similar way, I practice care and mindfulness in making new friendships and contacts. Materialism is an addiction to be avoided. Superficiality in dealing with people is worse. It is a destructive force which corrupts the heart and soul.

Friendship

Friendship is a process. Though we say, "I have a friend who....," friends are not possessions; they are partners in an exchange of support, intimacy and affection. The process of making and keeping friendships requires commitment and generosity of spirit. The rewards are great. Like exercise, maintaining friendships requires sustained effort and yields rewards to your wellbeing commensurate to your investment. I strive in my daily practice to cherish my friendships by nurturing them.