Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Breaking Your Eye Open

It has been a month since I've posted. Over a month.

No specific reason, except that I've been cocooning a bit. Which is fine, I guess, but I really need to get back into things. I'm pretty sure I only have about two readers, but I like those two readers. Two readers, you are both super awesome. And I really really don't want to disappoint.

A friend of mine sent me a 6FU quote a few weeks ago that I wanted to include in the blog. It's a quote I sort of agree with, but am also kind of unsure if I totally believe it. It's a quote by Nate Fisher.

"Love isn't something you feel, it's something you do. And if the person you're with doesn't want it, do yourself a favour and save it for someone who does"

I originally thought this was when Nate was with Lisa, but I mixed up episodes and this is actually from the fifth season, when Nate is with Brenda and Claire has just ended things with Billy and he's totally obsessing over getting her back. I suppose context really is everything.

I've been wondering about this statement, 'Love isn't something you feel, it's something you do.' I don't know what to make of it. A big part of me agrees with it, that love must be followed with action, and how you behave around your lover/partner, how you treat them really does make a difference. If love is something we do than we must focus on doing 'right' by the people we love, putting their needs above our own, not in a way that totally compromises our own being, and yes, we should also be prioritizing our own needs, but we must concentrate on what we can control in a relationship.

I suppose my hesitation to fully ingest this definition is that it seems to discount the mystical understanding of love, which is important. But perhaps in our society we put this up on a pedestal far too often, when we should be focusing on how our actions can portray the love that we do feel.

I'm not exactly sure where I stand. I get very caught up in the romanticization of love and sometimes I want to just focus on feeling good. I don't want my actions to have such weighted consequences. I don't want my love to be measured by my behavior. But that's just plain selfishness, on my part. Because isn't that what we should be striving for? To simply just be good to others? To act with integrity, which doesn't always mean 'getting it right', but it means that we try our very best to treat others respectfully and if we make a mistake we are willing to own it?

In theory, it seems quite simple, actually. In practice...well, anything in practice can and probably should feel like work at times. I mean, why else are we here except to improve ourselves as humans?

I've been thinking a lot about a specific scene in Season 4, Episode 1. This is one of my favourite episodes because the grief and pain is so intense that everyone is walking around all emotionally bloody and with big gaping slimy wounds that won't close. And those are always my favourite episodes because they are the most real and the most honest. In this episode, Lisa is dead and Nate and Lisa's family are trying to come together for the funeral. Of course, no one can agree on how best to honour Lisa's memory and everyone is in too much pain to compromise. At one point, David escapes to Claire's room, who is dealing with her own heartbreak over Russel, the abortion and Olivier's messy interference in her life. She is studying the work of Nan Goldin, one of my favourite photographers.



She tells David she's trying to 'break her eye open' like Olivier taught them in class, to see the world in a fresh way, 'without all the same tired associations we've had'. She refers to it as 'the hardest fucking thing in the world'.

So here we all are. Trying to break our eye open. Trying to see everything without painful memories, without past heartbreaks or trauma or irritation. Without baggage. To see for the first time, or perhaps to see in spite of knowing what we know.