Giving Up

Since the 90s I've seen a lot of people put on the hats, the leather coats, take a seat at the piano, but they haven't captured the pained and mournful emotion that Donny Hathaway conjured up.  It's not their faults for wanting to be inspired amidst mediocre times.  The dark shadow that hovers over Donny Hathaway's legacy might be why he wasn't someone who's name I heard a lot of as a child.  There's a stereotype of the emotionally unstable artist, that's self-destructive.  Most people acknowledge it when they have to, but dealing with it as an active reality when someone they are fond of is unraveling seems to be a taboo.  Looking back on it in retrospect never helps. Maybe that's what happened with Donny Hathaway?  Is it not unlike the way I feel about so many of the artists from my youth in the 90s who died young as a result of reckless or self-destructive behavior?  Nevertheless my generation found our way back to Donny Hathaway through samples, and staples the same way they rediscovered Roberta Flack through the Fugees.  Maybe the latter beget the prior in this case?

The song itself, starts off like a eulogy, but takes this epic turn, that turns that ominous vibe around and though still pained, gives it a vitality fitting of the subject matter, a love that just won't seem to die, an attachment that can't be let go.  Romantically I've been there, but I am so far from that place now, that I don't relate to the song on that level.  Instead I find myself taking the song to an existential place, as strange as that may seem.

In growing closer to the lover who is no longer with me, I grew further apart from the other people in my life, the other passions and dreams I had that were in conflict with pursuing my relationship with her.  When I came through the darkness of the break-up so much time and experience had come and gone that all the things I let go of to embrace the relationship didn't matter as much as I thought they might now that I was free to focus on them.  My attachment to them was irrevocably altered.  Moving on from the past was a wholesale purchase.  Giving up on  my life configured around a future with my ex really meant giving up on my life because I let my relationship become the crux of my existence, my frame of reference.

The result of being open to moving forward meant reconfiguring my life so that it wasn't constantly full of reminders of a past I had so many regrets about, was an embracing of my current moment.  What became the constant in the absence of the push & pull was my occupation, and the social relationships I'd neglected or under-appreciated there.  There was ample means to find a purpose in living, the beauty of life there that I didn't feel the need to actively adopt a surrogate relationship to replace what I'd lost.  It didn't hurt that what I'd lost turned out to be of much less worth than what I'd ascribed it and committed to over the years.

People have a way of broadcasting how little value they place on their own actions when their own desires for gratification are unmet. One of the ways the do this is by giving up on people, things.  Sometimes all you can do to move on is meet them half way and accept it and give up as well.  This can sometimes complicate matters if the person is feigning those feelings as a means towards having a need to be pursued met.  Part of my maturation has been recognizing I gave up on those kind of mind games a long time ago.  If your way of getting me to take an interest in you is by acting disinterested in me, I can not abide.  I am doing my best to express exactly how I feel, no more coy ambiguities.  If someone doesn't react, I may wonder if they're just trying to draw me out, see what I'm going to do next, or they're just not interested.  I go with the latter more often than not, because I just don't have the patience or wherewithal to get all mixed up in the crazy making that is modern courtship.  It really has gone down the tubes.

I've become lukewarm as a result, and that does upset me.  Muting my reactions to people was something I actively did, as a matter of saving face, playing the game, but I don't really have to do that  most times.  I just don't really have many things I react to in a positive way, outside of acceptance or acquiescence.  All this coolness of emotion is a little disheartening by nature, but every so often I get a surprise burst of emotion.  Finding someone attractive is an intellectual experience more than an emotional one, like sizing up a leap.  Yeah, she's pretty, yeah, if he and I approached the same woman, I'd be out of luck etc.  Being attracted to someone, that's visceral, it's all feeling, and sometimes it's a one-way feeling, which is a horrible predicament to be in.  When it's mutual and fully realized, it's an otherworldly force drawing you closer to someone and tearing you to pieces all at once.  It should be a rare occurrence honestly.  The thing is, the way things are nowadays, you never really know how people process their emotions, their relationships, their sense of connection to others.  For some people attraction is an expected response to how they carry themselves, just a sign that their "working it" is working, and nothing comes from it.  For others it's just a pretext for casual intimacies and nothing more, like being hungry and actually in the mood for a particular thing.

When our bodies and personalities become a means to and end, in this case some sort of relational or physical gratification of a interpersonal sort, emotionally and/or physically honesty and sincerity can get in the way of results.  To truly be honest and sincere you have to be considerate, which requires reflection and forethought.  The absence of those mental processes before a person acts on an impulse is a sign that they lack commitment to their choices.  For those of us looking for love, that should be a Red Flag if we are in the market for something we want to hold on to.  The way I have lived, I want things that will last a lifetime, that I feel my efforts to take care of and maintain will not be in vain.  I don't want to put my heart and soul into something I'm going to be forced to let go of because it has a will of its own, that will leave me longing.  That's too much like torture, and I wouldn't wish that upon most people when I'm in a good emotional place.

Before my last relationship I remember fielding my Father & Stepfather's questions about having a woman in my life, knowing how my mother and stepmother could give them the blues, and I said, "I can do bad by myself!" and I was doing bad at the time to be truthful.  Now is a different story, a different time, and all I know is when you don't care for so long, when you find yourself wanting to care, it's confusing.  When you recognize what is attractive, but don't feel a strong attraction to anyone, having someone literally making you jump inside, by nearly brushing arms, is a little much.  To say I didn't know I had it in me is one thing, but to experience butterflies in that moment after all this time is supremely profound.  The experience changes the scales by which all the previous estimations of my emotional capacity are measured.  It was like a burst of Technicolor in Pleasantville, which I still haven't seen.  It brings a whole new meaning to shades of gray, none of the 50 popular ones, I have a more refined personal palette.  That moment was so striking because it came to pass in the midst of a pedestrian occurrence that happens everyday.  That's also a good sign that my reaction was an internal miscue, a deep longing creeping out independent of the other person who was the object of my internalized affection.

Where I am now in my life, this place of acceptance, which also becomes a place of complacency, can not afford to be disturbed by delusional fantasies, miscommunication, and fools errands brought on by flight of fancy and fits of passion.  What's requisite is reciprocity.  If I, or whoever the she may be, fail to create an environment where that emerges, it's probably best to leave things be, let those thoughts and feelings go.  It's much healthier to embrace those that embrace you than seek warmth from the cool, peace from the chaos.  Those are compromises that don't reconcile themselves.  I've had enough unrequited love, enough unsolicited drama, so why entertain or foster it at this point in my life?  We all have better things to do with ourselves, and maybe at some point, with others who are eager to join us.  The trick is, sometimes people aren't honest, or just not sure about what they think or feel.  Other times they just don't communicate it in a way you understand.  Of course, people tend to only understand communication they Want to hear, and omit or augment what they don't want to hear so they can allow themselves to continue on thinking and feeling the way they are inclined.  I don't want to, can't allow myself to be that person.  It's a balancing act to know when to care enough to embrace hope in the face of an opportunity, or give up on illusions you've grown attached to.

Faced with that, and all that is fleeting in life with friends, family, culture, and time, giving up on things doesn't seem so bad after all when you've got other things to hold on to that never seem to fail.  Inspirations like those, the ones you can put some faith in, will get you through.