Even Suicide Has Lost It's Appeal

No one has orange soda on their fountain drink machines anymore. I guess people just aren't that fond of it. Things change… go figure. Some things do anyway.

It's been a full couple of weeks, weddings and deaths. Both always make me take a moment to reflect. To kind of step outside and look in on myself and the life I'm choosing to surround myself with. Not always a good thing to do.

Ronnie's plane flew into the side of a mountain in Colorado.
He was twenty five years old.

I haven't seen him much in the last couple of years. He's been working as a travel nurse. Helping people and traveling, it fit well with him. He had just started a new job in Arizona as a flight nurse. They were on the way to pick up a patient, bad weather and such.

Done.

I know that he was loved. I know I have friends who are hurting. I know this world is a poorer place for me to spend the next sixty years in (any of us for that matter) without him here. He added value to this place and the hearts of more than a few.

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One of the people I really like (high praise) got married. I happen to really be fond of her husband as well. It's funny but that seldom happens. She and I talked on the phone for a while a day or two before the wedding. She asked if I could give her any advice on how to make a relationship of that nature work. It was a question that struck me as funny seeing that she knows my history with relationships. I honestly couldn't come up with anything good at the moment so she suggested I write it down.

I still don't have anything good.

I have been thinking about it though. Here's the problem: (One of them anyway) I was on my back in the grass the other day watching the clouds. You know how this works. That one looks like a turtle, this one a goat, that one a monkey. If you look back to the first one it's no longer a turtle but a jet car. I stopped bouncing from cloud to cloud and just watched one. It was constantly changing in small subtle ways. The edges blurry and shifting, rolling back onto itself like waves crashing on the beach then running back out to the sea again and again. As I watched it became thing after thing after thing. People do the same thing. We are constantly changing and shifting. Our moods, ideas, dreams, thoughts, feelings, fears they all constantly boil and bubble moving and shifting. We are never the same person in any two moments.

The cloud game is often shared with another person. Both looking at the same shifting clouds through the eyes of different lives and seeing the same things differently. The problem is that we all have things that we want to see. We all have an agenda. We look at one another and form relationships with people we can't hope to truly understand. We see them (both the people and the relationships) through eyes that we can not trust. We see things, no matter how hard we try through filters of our own hearts and minds. None of us truly seeing reality if such a thing even exists.

So the question remains… Somehow understanding the problem better doesn't always make an answer easier.

How do you have a relationship for fifty some odd years with a person who is constantly changing, while you are constantly changing, and neither one of you truly sees the other person as they are but rather as some variation of that which you want them to be.

My answer is you don't. It is not humanly possible…

You will not wake up every day and like the person next to you. You will in fact wake up one day and actively dislike them. You will do and say horrible things to one another (with great self control you may only think them but they will still be there and you will both feel them). You will look at that person and realize suddenly that you don't even know who they are anymore. I can make no guarantees other than you will be sad, hurt, misunderstood, and at times feel desperately alone while you lay next to one another in bed. You will meet other people who you find attractive and incredibly interesting; who you are certain if you were only free of your responsibilities could be a better match for you. Should I go on?

Now there's another problem. We all have a mountain in our future. Most of us will not be so lucky as to have it show up while we are doing something great for others and which we are passionate about. Between now and then we have a choice. We can accept the fact that those relationships are not possible or we can choose something else.

The key to all of this is what we call Love. Loving someone is allowing them to be whatever it is that they are and choosing to like them anyway. There are times when it will be easy to do that… There will be others when it is extremely difficult… There will be others still when you just have to fake it until it becomes only extremely difficult again. Don't confuse allowing someone to be what they are with allowing them to be reckless or abusive with your heart. But you can criticize, correct, fight, and direct while still liking someone very much.

And I think that is the advice I have. To always remember no matter what, that even as you struggle with what you are, they are, and the relationship is in any given moment, there is a place where your hearts met and that cannot be undone. You can trash the relationship if you like but your hearts will always recognize one another and smile upon meeting. Let them.

Oscar Wilde has a line in his play The Importance of Being Earnest: If you promise not to take too long I will wait here for you the rest of my life.

That's kind of the idea. We can choose any number of adventures to pursue, choosing what to do is far less important than choosing who to do it with.

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You have to love a restaurant with a self serve fountain soda machine. It's one of the few things that you have control over as a child. Here's your cup go pick what kind of soda you would like. We all know the answer. Suicide! I want it all… that's right just put all of them together right here in this one cup. Mmmm, thanks much. The problem as I have already stated is that no one has orange soda on the fountain anymore. Believe it or not the orange was the one truly key ingredient. Nothing else really mattered but without the orange it just isn't the same. I never even noticed until it wasn't there anymore. If you don't believe me go give it a try. You'll have to take a can of orange soda with you.

Things change- Most things are neither good nor bad- We take care of that.

Orange soda as a metaphor for life and relationships… Odd but somehow it works. (At least from where I lay here in the grass)

M- You looked beautiful on your day. L- is a fabulously lucky man! There will always be room in my heart for you both.