...IS AN ANCIENT OCEAN WIDE

Intimacy is not who you let touch you. Intimacy is who you text at 3am about your dreams and fears. Intimacy is giving someone your attention, when ten other people are asking for it. Intimacy is the person always in the back of your mind, no matter how distracted you are.

TACTICAL

Tuesday I will (finally!) be meeting with a counselor about my classes and what it will take to get out of 2-year college.  I have also switched up my training so that days that I work I will be doing cardio and my off days will be my resistance training days.  My goal is to be around 215-220 lbs. by Christmas.

One the workouts that I plan on doing is a kettlebell workout that combines both strength and cardio.  In fact, several of the kettlebell workouts involve multiple movements in one exercise, so I guess that also work as cardio training as well.  For instance, the squat-snatch-press movement is a single exercise that gives you everything you are looking for in one routine.  Bundling the exercise up with several other movements and you can slash the time working out and still tone and shape your whole body.  

Finally, I purchased a new-to-me phone… it looks really neat and I think that somehow it is representative of my progress in Omaha.  As it relates to me, it is a sign that not only am I doing well, but I am also gaining with regard to my personal achievements.  Speaking of which… I need to stop dragging with my personal trainer’s certification..!

INTIMACY

For quite awhile I have used the image of the person who you call at 3 a.m. with a dead body in your trunk  with the expectation for help as the measure of how deep a friendship runs.  I mean, the “shovel conundrum” is a rather extreme example but the test of friendship, of love, has always been one of extreme.  But I think that this statement does a better job of it than wanting help in one of the most desperate of times.  These moments are elements of universal feelings that connect people to each other.

I once held that it takes the “thousandth, thousandth” of myself to participate in a fling, a pseudo-relationship that is born of physical attraction, self-esteem and Daddy issues.  But to truly participate and be present in a relationship takes much more energy and is far more demanding.  The person that you trust with your deepest fears and grandest hopes, the person that you let hold you when you are hurt, who you choose to celebrate your victories, big and small, that person is part of your intimate, spiritual selves.  And having lived outside of and without this person for most of my life, it has become something that I have taken note of and regarded with an analytical eye.  I have wondered what makes a person happy in a relationship and what are the components of this mythical good relationship.  Now I don’t have a firm and concrete definition of what makes a good relationship, nor do I have any examples to share.  It is something that “you know it when you see it” kind of thing as it simultaneously contains traits that are easily identifiable and are at once familiar to us all.  But, at least it seems to me, the problem with this knowledge being available and easily accessible to us.  What makes this a problem is that we have become conditioned to take so much for granted, and especially the easy things.

A kind word.  Thoughtful gestures and considerate acts.  Genuine interest in another person.  These and a host of other positive energy-generating emotions and acts, we take them for granted because they don’t cost anything.  The qualities that make up our character seem to be the things that people pay the least attention to when it comes to relationships, with others and with ourselves.

When you are “bad” with these emotions, I believe you tend to have problems with intimacy, especially the kind of intimacy that I reference when I use the word in my blog, the kind of intimacy that is responsible for the emotions that are evoked by the quote that inspired this post.

The security that it takes to feel comfortable with a person is made up of all of the previously mentioned acts.  Again, not to engender any pity for myself (because this is an objective observation and not a subjective whine), the reason that I note this is to say why “I don’t like people”.

My introversion allows me to act according to my own set of mores and not those shaped by social groups or subgroups.  By not being constrained to the prejudices of external influences, the abstractions that I make are mine alone.  If someone happens to agree with me, it is by chance as much as common interests, because of “the how” that we have arrived at our conclusions.

“The difference in the things that we give and the things we receive..” can be measured by our expectations.  And if you expect to receive financial rewards, public praise, great love, then you must be prepared to give a great effort.  If not, well, according to Blake, “You’re gonna be shinin’ my shoes!”, which in this case is a metaphor for wanting something great for minimal investment.

Looking back over the past decade-and-a-half (?!?!) of my intimate personal relationships, the thread that runs through all of the fail is the investiture of the emotions that make a relationship work.  Love depends not on what you are willing to get, but instead is determined on what you are willing to give, which is everything.  And I have no problem with saying that the women I have been involved with all had this one trait in common: they were not willing to give of themselves what was required to be IN love.