Frustrations crop up in any relationship. Times when it seems like you “get it” and your significant other simply doesn’t. Maybe your partner has never read a word of Emerson, Thoreau, Jung or Kerouac.
Maybe they have no desire to get rid of the TV or eventually pay everything off and get off the grid in all the ways that you dream about.
Maybe they look at you all crazy-like when you talk about leaving it all behind or fantasize about hopping on a freight-train just to find out where it’s going.
Maybe they don’t see the relation to all the hoop-jumping that the man asks you to do and that continual feeling of being “stressed” and “rushed.” Maybe they hate not winning the rat-race and yet can’t begin to fathom the possibility of leaving it.
Maybe they insist on having more and more channels in higher and higher definition even though they have no time to watch anything if there were anything even worth watching.
Maybe they subscribe to more magazines and papers than anyone could ever possibly read and then leave them littered about as constant reminders of tasks not attended to.
Maybe they’re over-booked and they over-book you. Maybe they complain about the housework and yet are constantly purchasing more things to dust, accessories to manage, and clothes to wash… not to mention the large items that depreciate before they can be paid off.
Maybe they don’t consciously see the correlation between never getting ahead, always working, and their constantly-growing stack of credit cards.
I tend to not care too much about evangelism to the non-converted and I believe more in simply holding fast to my own way of doing things. But this independence is usually invisible until someone (employer or marketer) tries to force his way across my lines. And nowhere are the lines between people so close as in the household. And this is where I find myself struggling to find the right way to employ my own brand of civil disobedience within the marriage household.
There is nothing so poisonous as passivity between family members, loved ones and close acquaintances. These are the cast members with whom the Creator has linked us on our most personal stage. If we cannot be ourselves with them, then we are wasting a good part of the book of our lives.
I always find sad the stories of the closeted homosexual who struggles to have a wife and children and play a part for them while, at the same time, follow his true inclinations in the world. But the fact is that his family has done nothing wrong. It is he who has chosen to half-heartedly follow two sets of longings. And, as a result his wife and children will never have an honest relationship with the most important man in their life. That is not to say that this kind of fundamental honesty is easy. As soon as we’ve taken one step down a false path it becomes increasingly difficult to right our course. Doing so requires a leap of faith; faith that truth will set us free where lies enslave us.
In a less dramatic way the closeted Creative is not much different. We too must not restrain our belief system no matter how odd it might seem to employer or family member. Let them then decide if we are truly the person they want in their company. It is the Transcendentalist belief that by releasing our true spirit into the world the love that will be attracted to it will be greater. Hiding it out of shame leads to indignation and resentfulness and this makes us exactly those things. When we see a man who is shameful, resentful and indignant, we are not attracted to him regardless of the true qualities that these negative attributes are seemingly protecting.
It turns out that when talking about our differences with those closest to us the message is not about directly converting them, but rather relieving ourselves of the tendency to “act” for them. It is this tendency that leads us to compensatory, and self-destructive behavior AND THIS BECOMES THE FRUSTRATING WEDGE in our relationship.
The people around us seek, deserve and demand our honesty and it is our duty both to them and to ourselves to be ourselves honestly.
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