The yin and the yang

I continued to ponder on the topic from yesterday as I was driving home. I realized the reason my two loves are at odds with each other.

One love must be completely selfless and the other requires absolute selfishness to attain perfection. No wonder they come back nipping at each other's tails because they are aspects that can never be quashed. By natural progression, when you neglect your own needs and desires for an extended period, you will show signs of resentment towards whatever is keeping you from fulfilling those wants. Even if you really do not resent the reason because logically you know the choice is yours, outwardly the signs will surface.

How convoluted is it? They say that to truly love another you have to learn to love yourself. Yet in the world I have created, loving another fully means sacrificing myself at the altar of my object of desire. I do love myself! I love myself so much that I think the only gift worth giving to my love is plain old me, as I am. No frills, just me.

Something isn't quite adding up though. If I give myself away, then I will always feel a void. Which is more important? More beneficial? To me or to others? Myself? Or what I have to offer?

to be continued...

To live in balance

There are aspects within me always at odds with each other. Both fulfill the same need inside me: the need to blossom and swell with emotion and enthusiasm. It's a strange need to describe. One aspect inspires me to love a person with all my heart, to abandon all else and throw myself into the flames of passion, so to speak. It causes an uproar of emotions and the more enthusiastic I become in pursuing it. The other aspect is a love for learning and creation: to expend all energy into the experience of something new whether it be to my own making or already existing. Mediocrity will not be tolerated, at least not by my own standards because there would be no value in its pursuit. It would be meaningless: a trifling waste of effort worth nothing to anyone. Thus, it also demands all time and effort to be hurled at whatever is at hand.

Perhaps there really is no room for both loves in my life. The effort required for the love of one person and the love of all other things seem to cancel each other out. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground that does not lie on that dreaded plateau of mediocre stagnation. Attempts to suppress one seems only to let the other lie dormant for a period until the currently active love wanes just a little usually out of my control. Then the opposing force comes back with an intensified fervor. Fighting one another for head space, allowing for no peace at all. It never ends. Every few weeks, just when I think I have it under control, my mind races and clutters with thoughts to justify either side.

At the moment I feel like my creative aspect is vying for dominance once more in my happily in love and idle mind. It concocts stories & conversations that never existed to convince me that my choice is wrong. I don't believe them if I focus and let myself think but like I said, it's hard to listen to myself through the noise sometimes. Other times it convinces me that this is not my true nature but both sides make that argument and I never really know. Can I really not be/have both? Is it too greedy?