I had a comment on one of my previous posts that somewhat indirectly got me to thinking about humans again. Now, this is going to be my thoughts partially on intimate relationships with people of the opposite sex and partially on strictly plutonic relationships so please bear with me.
I remember when I was a little kid seeing my father as a man larger than life. He was a big man, at least to me at the time, whose physical strength astounded me. I remember he would flex his muscles and I would be amazed at the size of his biceps that were roughly the size of my head. He could snatch me up with one arm and hang me upside down by my ankles while tickling me with the other until I couldn't breath. I asked him how tall he was and he said he was 6' tall. Being myself not much longer than a yard stick and not much thicker, 6' tall to me was something to dream about. I remember watching Batman with him and after the movie was over he would always tell me in a secretive voice, "You know...that movie is about my life. I'm Batman." As a child, part of me believed him even though I knew Batman wasn't real. Yet still, if there was a Batman, he was probably my dad. He was also the wisest man I knew. No one knew more about the Bible or life in general than my father and anybody who disagreed with him had to be wrong. His anger was something to be feared as well, not in the sense that I was afraid that he would seriously hurt me or anything like that. My father had, actually still has, this look that he would get on his face when he was angry with you that just made you feel about 2" tall. It is strange. The look was basically an expressionless stare. Something about his eyes drenched you in shame or fear or whatever it is he is trying to get across. I hated "the look". "The look" was often accompanied by a scolding in a low voice followed by a dreaded spanking. And I don't mean one of those one hit slaps on the butt with a hand. These were real spankings with a belt or some other unpleasant object and you were going to cry whether you wanted to or not.
Now, when I was little, I don't remember ever being angry with my father, or my mother for that matter, for punishing me. I almost always knew that I deserved it. As I got older, however, I began to question whether or not I deserved the punishment I received for misbehaving. I still admit that 7 times out of 10 I probably deserved what I got. But it was those 3 that I felt that I had been unjustly accused and punished that had a part in shattering my perfect image of my father. Also, on a less important note I grew up to be half a foot taller than my father. He was no longer larger than life to me. He was a man. Still, he was and is a great man whom I admire greatly and aspire in many aspects to be like. Yet, he became just a man.
On another note, as a child growing up I would see my favorite athletes and they too seemed larger than life. Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player in the world and I dreamed of replacing Scottie Pippen as Jordan's right hand man. Jordan would never be beaten by anyone. He was perfect. Inevitably my image of him would be shattered by knowledge of his personal life that was less than perfect. My image of what greatness was slowly began to crumble with each insight into the imperfections of humans.
As I grew older still and became interested in girls, I developed an image of the perfect woman from what I knew of my mother, who was perfect by the way, and from women in movies and books that I read. I also developed an image of what it would be to be "in love" from watching my parents, movies, books, and also the Bible. Ever the imaginative kid I would conjure up fantasies in my mind of rescuing this dazzling beauty from impending danger killing the bad guy and sweeping her off of her feet only to live happily ever after in perfect bliss and harmony. The perfect woman was a tall blonde haired, blue eyed, soft spokenly wise beauty with an even temperament to whom I would write beautiful poetry and spoil with flowers constantly. We would stare longingly into one another's eyes for hours on end whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears. We would never fight because we would love one another so much that any disagreement would be easily resolved with compromise. Traveling the world we would have adventure after adventure until we decided to have two children at which point we would live in a nice house in a good neighborhood and raise them to be professional basketball players. That's the condensed version of what it was going to be like to be in love.
Needless to say, this idea of the perfect woman and a life therewith is dead to me. What I am attracted to these days is much different than it was then. However, I did have a relationship in which the girl was most of the things I listed above, although certainly not soft spoken. At least I thought she was at the time. For a while it was bliss and disgustingly romantic and I did attempt to spoil her with poetry and flowers and all the things that I thought would make her be desperately in love with me and I with her. She was larger than life to me. She was the perfect woman. I had her on a pedestal as my queen. However, the inevitable did happen and despite my greatest attempts to ignore the signs, I realized that she too was indeed imperfect. I thought our love was eternal and we would be together for all time. The idea of life without her was inconceivable; that is, until the walls of my fantasy came crashing down. My perfect woman was imperfect. We were imperfect.
It was all more than I could bear at the time. The time since then has been spent in reflection and confusion about what is, what is not, and what can be reality. Are those words in Shakespeare's Sonnet 106 based on anything real? Is it possible to feel that way about a person? If you felt that way about a person would it be anything real or would it be a denial or distortion of truth? Is it right, wrong, or neither to have heroes that are mortal men? Do our naive notions of those who we see as great healthy or inevitably destructive to us? I have no real answer to any of these questions. My only thoughts are that everything that we experience in this life whether it be triumph, failure, love, loss, loyalty or betrayal molds us into who we are and what we become. Why did God create man in such a way that we became imperfect? I suppose that it is important to have exaggerated and idealistic views of some things in order for us to have something to strive toward. Without these we would be doomed to always settle for things that we do not want and become people who are less than great. I believe that fantasy is a beautiful thing as long as we realize that it is just that. Without a healthy understanding of the difference between fantasy and reality, the effects of failure, loss, and betrayal will have a much greater impact on us than is necessary.
Anyway, I was thinking about all these things and decided to write my thoughts down. I hope you will give me yours. Am I full of crap? Am I right? Is it even worth thinking about?
