Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Pain and Intimacy: a few Valentine's Day thoughts
I really have no strong feelings about Valentine’s Day. I’ve very rarely been in a relationship on Valentine’s Day, so I don’t really have any special memories associated with this holiday. On the other hand, Valentine’s Day never really made me bitter that I always seemed to be in a perpetually single state. And I get mildly annoyed over the whole commercial manipulation of the holiday, but I would say I have stronger feelings about the commercialization of Christmas (which is actually a holiday that I love). So, as I ponder what to write in a feminist Valentine’s Day post, I find myself thinking more about love and relationships in a general sense rather than phenomena associated with the day itself.
One of the things that has been on my mind recently is the pain that inevitably accompanies love and intimacy. When you open your heart to someone and allow yourself to be vulnerable within a relationship, you are opening yourself to hurt and sorrow, no matter how kind and generous the other person. Today, in Slate, Robert Pinsky focused his article on love poetry on the pain associated with love, and I would like to add one more poem to the list of poems he outlines: "Undressing" by Rumi (and translated by Coleman Barks).
"Undressing"
Learn the alchemy true human beings
know: the moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given, the door
will open. Welcome difficulty
as a familiar comrade. Joke with
torment brought by the Friend.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
then are taken off. That undressing,
and the naked body underneath, is
the sweetness that comes after grief.
What I love about this poem is the way that it presents sorrow and pain not only as natural occurrences, but also as things to be embraced. At the end of the poem, he seems to indicate that accepting (and eventually letting go of) sorrow can be an erotic experience. On a broader level, this reminds me that physical and emotional closeness are intrinsically connected, and our experiences with one will affect the other (and vice versa). What I think about most when I read this poem, however, are experiences in my own life that have proven to me that the process of accepting, working through, and letting go of the sorrow and pain that inevitably come from intimacy is an immensely powerful and freeing experience.
So, this Valentine's Day, my feminist resolve is to "welcome difficulty" and recognize it's a necessary (and postentially freeing) part of close, meaningful relationships.
(I pulled my copy of this poem from a book called The Glance: Songs of Soul Meeting, published by Penguin in 1999.)
One of the things that has been on my mind recently is the pain that inevitably accompanies love and intimacy. When you open your heart to someone and allow yourself to be vulnerable within a relationship, you are opening yourself to hurt and sorrow, no matter how kind and generous the other person. Today, in Slate, Robert Pinsky focused his article on love poetry on the pain associated with love, and I would like to add one more poem to the list of poems he outlines: "Undressing" by Rumi (and translated by Coleman Barks).
"Undressing"
Learn the alchemy true human beings
know: the moment you accept
what troubles you’ve been given, the door
will open. Welcome difficulty
as a familiar comrade. Joke with
torment brought by the Friend.
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes
and jackets that serve to cover,
then are taken off. That undressing,
and the naked body underneath, is
the sweetness that comes after grief.
What I love about this poem is the way that it presents sorrow and pain not only as natural occurrences, but also as things to be embraced. At the end of the poem, he seems to indicate that accepting (and eventually letting go of) sorrow can be an erotic experience. On a broader level, this reminds me that physical and emotional closeness are intrinsically connected, and our experiences with one will affect the other (and vice versa). What I think about most when I read this poem, however, are experiences in my own life that have proven to me that the process of accepting, working through, and letting go of the sorrow and pain that inevitably come from intimacy is an immensely powerful and freeing experience.
So, this Valentine's Day, my feminist resolve is to "welcome difficulty" and recognize it's a necessary (and postentially freeing) part of close, meaningful relationships.
(I pulled my copy of this poem from a book called The Glance: Songs of Soul Meeting, published by Penguin in 1999.)
// posted by Seraphine @ 6:40 PM 
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Valentines day always in in the middle of grief for me. I realize this blog is moribund, but the post made me think.
(December 26 Courtney died, January 26 Jessica died, their birthdays were two days before and after Valentines).
So, strange as it seems, I think about pain and Valentine's Day every Christmas.
(December 26 Courtney died, January 26 Jessica died, their birthdays were two days before and after Valentines).
So, strange as it seems, I think about pain and Valentine's Day every Christmas.
I've decided recently that the pain really is something that I need to embrace more, because I've realized that there are so many things in my life that I've not done and don't do because I fear the pain that will come when I find out how much I suck. I guess the point is that the pain of sucking, the pain of failure, the pain of loss, all of it, there's nothing you can do to hide from it except to not try to not love to not live. So living fully, must therefore require embracing the pain too.
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