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More than anything else in this life we desire love.
Above fame, fortune, security and even invincibility, we all want to be loved.
And we will go to sometimes the most psychologically extreme lengths in order to
attain it, or settle for the most emotionally barren situations in an attempt to
preserve our image of it.
Occasionally, we rebuke its calling for reasons that
in the moment we cannot explain and may never be able to explain, and whose
echoing whisper haunts us for years to come. In the name of love, we ignore our
better judgment, the counsel of our elders and the nudge from deep within the
core of our being that if we listened to we would be faced with the heart
wrenching task of walking away from our perceived source of love. So, we dismiss
our judgment and all the world's romantics breathe another sigh of relief as
they move on to witness yet another plunge from cupid's arrow, leaving the stung
to heal the wound themselves.
The romantics implore us to heed the cravings that
envelope our bodies like a tidal wave of passion, tossing us in its foamy
current of titillation, obscuring our visibility to truth, pulling us out into
the sea of our most precious illusions, dreams and hopes, then slamming our
disoriented minds against the hard, wet shore of reality, limp, exhausted yet
yearning only to go back into the perilous waters, even at the risk of drowning.
The price of passion is too steep for some who never discover its magic, and
never exhilarating enough for others who thrive on that charge, that rush, that
mind-blowing sensation of fierce hunger for the taste of another's presence.
Gibran says, "God moves in passion and rests in
reason." At the time of this story, I pretty much had down pat the
‘moving in passion' part; it was the ‘resting in reason' that continued to
be a source of lessons. The Tin Man and Me is a true story for every woman who
finds herself inexplicably drawn to the emotionally unavailable man and then
blames him for the relationship dissolving. Yes, gentlemen, this is a chick's
story, but there's something in it for you, too. For all the tigresses you hunt
through erotic jungles, pursuing relentlessly as though they will satisfy an
appetite that has remained starved for years, only to have your heart clawed
literally to shreds and near death by this prey. This story is for all of us who
insist on searching for love outside ourselves and within the confines of
another's body. It's a futile search and something in all of us knows this, yet
still we manage to repeatedly set our foot upon the very path leading to
heartbreak, ache and mistake.
Love eludes no one. We cannot find love for it is not
lost. It is within us. This spiritual gem becomes nothing more than a platitude
when we address the reality of our desire to mate, have children and create a
sense of unity in our lives, doesn't it?
And this is where Dorothy found herself
in the Wizard of Oz, when the yellow brick road split off into two different
directions. She didn't know which way would lead her to her heart's desire -
home. It wasn't until the end of her journey that she learned she'd had this
knowledge available to her the whole time. As do we all. We assume the first
batter on the plate after we've decided to mate is going to be the one to hit a
grand slam.
Marianne Williamson says it poignantly: "If the train doesn't
stop at your station, it's not your train." We expend all this energy
trying to stop the train in front of us, insisting it's ours, only to cause a
delay in the coming of the one down the track that's scheduled for us!
The attraction to tin men occurs long before we ever
set eyes on this prince of men. In consciousness, the desire is born from a
storehouse of intimacy fears, commitment issues, weak emotional stamina and the
unchecked primal thirst to run with wolves. On some level, the tin man we
gravitate toward is the safe one for the very reason that he's unavailable. Safe
may get you on base, but grand slams don't happen from the safe zone
Tin men
are simply souls in the midst of a healing whose emotional musculature is being
cooled down after a period of marathon use. They're on a time-out and we keep
trying to rally them back into the game. Unavailable men are not the problem.
Our attraction to them is the issue. No one ‘out there' is the problem.
Cause and effect are powerful laws of consciousness that are not to be mocked
lightly.
Ultimately, what I came to understand is that not only are men not the
problem, my desire to the wrong ones was not the problem either, but my focusing
on the problem is the problem. It has been said many times, many ways: the
thinking that got us here will not get us out. Knowing all this at the time I
met the lead man in this poem caused absolutely no shift in my thinking
whatsoever. So, one could suggest that: a) the forces of the universe are more
powerful than the knowing in my mind; b) denial really isn't a river; c) it was
a test of discernment.
The thing is, that's what makes the road to Oz so
appealing—the wonder. And wonderland is a magical place if you drink the right
potion.
(continued next week)
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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