This is a mindful excerpt of Waylon H. Lewis’ first book, “Things I Would Like to Do with You.” It’s eco and lovely. Get your copy here.
“Any confusion you experience has within it the essence of wisdom automatically. So as soon as you detect confusion, it is the beginning of some kind of message. At least you are able to see your confusion, which is very hard. Ordinarily people do not see their confusion at all, so by recognizing your confusion, you are already at quite an advanced level. So you shouldn’t feel bad about that; you should feel good about it.”
~ Chögyam Trungpa
I would like to hear from you when you are confused.
Love can survive fear only if acknowledged.
Things are not easy, always. A love affair is not imagination. It is the vicissitudes of daily life. It is two lifestreams intermingling.
I would like to hear you give voice in the hard times—then I can know this is a river of true love, and not merely a shallow standing pool, a game.
Relationships—love—is not fantasy, it is bricks and mortar. It is earth. But it is fantasy, too. It is heaven: dreams and hormones and the pleasure in biology and sudden laughter.
It is the rub between the two that creates sparks: earth, heaven.
It is communication that is water that cools those sparks, and gets us through the fear of loss, the difficult times, the simple arguments over dishes or the serious arguments over ethics.
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” ~ Nelson Mandela
I would like to communicate with you about Difficult Things.
We have connected.
I would like to love you if that is how it is. I would like to honor this connection with mutual openness.
Or, I would like to lose you if that is how it is. I would not like to dishonor our connection with a lack of communication about the confusing things.
Connection is a rare spark, a cause for joy. I would not like to lose said spark because of your inability to communicate about your fear.
I learned when young that if confused I should be open about it, and it will get better.
And yet sometimes I forget this lesson: I collapse into insecurity, and if unopened it can become depression. When I can not be charming, when I can not be who you or others think I am, I am embarrassed.
It is our task to talk when we would hide. We can talk confusion, we do not have to wait for clarity.
I would like to honor our fear by tending to it. When gripped by confusion do not shut down: rather, talk it out.
It is a clumsy, simple tactic that works every time: by giving voice to that which I do not understand, my confusion gains sanity instead of calcifying into fear—fear, of fear.
If you are afraid, come here and I will hold you. Or go away, go for a walk and hold yourself sweetly.
I would like to never resent your fear—if communicated. Rather: I would like to admire you for acknowledging your hesitation. There are reasons for it that I can not yet know. And I would like to care if you will let me see.
I would like to care more about you than about my feelings for you.
Whatever occurs in the confused mind
is regarded as workable.
It is a fearless proclamation;
the Lion’s Roar.
~ Chögyam Trungpa
Oh, I would not like this to be wonderful only to see it collapse only because of broken communication. If we are not right for one another or the timing is not right and we can not make it right, that is that. Love is the hardest sport. Love is only available to those willing to be continually brave in weakness.
Can you be brave?
Say we have one wonderful night: say we bicycle far off together, to a wedding dinner with many ladies and gentlemen outside on a green farm. And say we laugh and dine at a white table amongst many white tables set beneath the gathering stars of a night that fast turns the green farm dark blue. And say you are elegant, and I will undress your elegance. But first in candlelight we talk with mentors and parents of friends and and then dance, dance, silly, enthusiastic, confident. The mosquitoes come out, hungry, we kiss and hold and talk and laugh, lying in the grass beneath the cool bushes lining the dark periphery of the bright tent.
It is an honor to know you.
But then say the next day you cancel our plans for our first dinner date without telling me. This is a basic courtesy we extend to friends. And then say we gather that night with friends and you are with a gentleman and you sit over there and it is all an affront served cold. I do not revel in heated jealousy and I will soon be cooly fine with this loss of our warmth of the night before. Perhaps you slept badly and you are just out of a long uneven relationship and you are not ready to unfold your wings. I do not know and can not since you do not tell me.
“Don’t say one thing then do another. Make your words speak the truth of your heart, else be silent and let your acts reveal it. In all things be…. yourself and you will be good for me. For my perception goes beyond the hollow emptiness of words, and witnesses every act your conscience. Your unspoken thoughts ring loudly in my eyes like a bell clear when true, and dull when false. I cannot speak the word…for I am the word…and I will not wed my future to a child, or a fool. ” ~ Almoustine
And so I would like to fold my wings closed against your heart. Such cowardliness is for children, though children have an excuse.
I would like to breathe out into the rain and lightning night as I bicycle away from you. I have made friends with myself, so I do not often fear loneliness. I am fine with disrespect, for my capacity to cease to care is contextualized by my good friend’s repeated advice over the years
“If she does not communicate, forget her, you deserve better.”
Say, I would like to forget you.
“Happiness is not a goal; it’s a byproduct.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
I would like to love my life and help you to love yours. Love is not selfish love but rather caring for another, which means we help to nurture our fundamental kindness.
I would like to love fully.
That day may be far off but I do not think it is for I want to name twelve noble children foolish things like Margaret and Huckleberry and Winslow and Whitman and Washington and Kerouac (Cary, for short) and Roosevelt (Rose) and Thoreau and Sargent and…
And I would like to love someone who would like to communicate.
And I would like to love someone who would like to communicate.
I would not like to, say, call or text or email or message you and not hear back, or hear back a week later, or a day later. I would not like to play games. I would not like to ask you out, and never be asked out. I would not like to treat, and never be treated.
I would like us to not play games, but rather to be simply honest.
“To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”
~ Charles Dickens
Love is not one-way: that is for boyish Mad Men and bored Housewives, and I admire neither.
If you are busy, take your time: space is yours and I will not take it from you, and space is mine and I will not give it up for you. But: if you play games with communication, like old climbing rope my affection for you will fray.
Loneliness is the salve for love, lost, and this antidote comes conveniently after misuse. I would not like to date a girl.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anais Nin
I would like to love and be loved by a deeply sane human, brave enough to surf fear and voice it messily.
I am ready for love; I have seen many shadows of it, shadows so weak they can not block the sun of your hot, red heart.
And I would like you to know that (so far) I am so grateful, I am tired, wet from the salt spray, I have stood by the shore all day and all my adulthood, day after day and some nights. But now I am ready to kiss the heart of a woman brave enough to feel fear and give voice to it. For in voicing our fears we introduce oxygen and in so doing give our fires life.
And yet I shall fondly look back at those times of loneliness at the water, the rock of the deep ocean, the creak of the wood that buoys me, the feeling of my tired hands shaking against the oars as I pull again, again against strong waves.
I don’t want my idea of you. That’s too easy, and it isn’t real. I want you, faults and all. And I want you to want me, faults and all, not any ideas you have about love.
“Becoming “awake” involves seeing our confusion more clearly.” ~ Chögyam Trungpa
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