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DonInChelsea

July 6th 2006

copyright© don oddy

~ I Won’t Cry for Yesterday ~

My Ordinary World

A song title from my past and days of great joy and sadness. There are recurring reminders of times past, they come in dreams and in reality. What we experience in our past we bring with us to the present. When we experience again those same moments and minutes and hours and days..

It seems like no time has past between then and now. Yet there is twenty, no thirty years of love and relationships with women I have cherished, and still happy times are brought back to recollect the balance of joy and sadness. So much joy in loving, so much sadness in remembering. I sometimes like to deny the whole of what has happened along the way. For in truth I would relish my good joyful memories and let the harsh ones and sad ones die and be forgotten.

And still I heard the song again with the words over and over, “I won’t cry for yesterday” and it stings and brings home repeated and repeated times of great sadness.

I don’t try to recall names or times when lovers have left me in deep anxiety. Most times when I have fallen for a new love, they have been as any who have captured my heart. Beauty inside and out, always different, not a type and certainly never chosen by me for in truth. I feel now I was always insecure in choosing. I let them choose, and as time has taught me, I was more than happy to return their feelings. Maybe there was mutuality, and certainly I was always open to making friendships and finding love, I was ‘easy’ when it came to intimacy, sharing any form of love, physical and emotional. I was definitely lonely and wanted a lover. So to assume I might be attractive to women smacks of ego. Actually anyone is attractive if they are open to love and returning love, so there is no ego, and I had no ego with lovers. I was an open book and happy to be in love for the most of everything that happened. And it was rare that I would end relationships, I just left them hanging in the wind sometimes as my life went along and lovers came and went.

It feels hard to put into words, I was always open to new love, when I was free, and not involved. And there is just one occasion where I can accept my fault in initiating infidelity. I was as guilty as I could make myself for my infidelity, my uncaring actions and lack of care. And that came out of lack of care for me in that relationship.

Indifference of feeling is the greatest sadness. For indifference means lack of due care and attention for another we may love. And I say may love, for in truth the problem is many of us would like to love, and we are complete beginners or so bad at loving ourselves, our love for others is quite frankly lacking in depth and intent. We can be worse than useless lovers, for if we never learned loving along the way, our beginner status makes us unreliable and unthinking and intolerant of our situation.

Indeed people who are learning to love don’t realise how bad they are at loving, because it means they are insensitive to themselves and their love, their partners needs and simple connection.

Actually in early days of loving we can be so useless it’s a wonder we ever form deeper bonds. And because we don’t get it, we don’t live it.

If when we look back, we can see our loving in times past is most often incomplete and superficial. Yet the growth pains of love are spectacular on us. For the emotional loving we deliver is as joyful and painful as any love at any time.

What we might take from our past is our capacity and our understanding of what makes love form and develop, what makes love flourish, and as important what kills love stone dead.

“I won’t cry for yesterday”, is a poignant reminder of times past, evoking some of my worst experiences of lovers and loving. A prime memory is indifference to me by others, and I too had this fault, forgetfulness of others and inconsiderate silence and worse inconsiderate and damaging activities undermining the fabric of love in them and me.

Yet my old friend denial. Now I know denial is something we all have. Denial is something we need inside us as much as we need truth. Denial is our way of coping with unbelievable truth, until we can believe the truth. Denial is very healthy for us and keeps us safe when there is no other safety. Denial is short term mostly until we can cope with our changes and new reality, our new ordinary world of now.

In my ordinary world of now, I am more careful with everyone I encounter and make sure I understand me and my behaviour. I keep and maintain myself with due care and attention. And with friends I have these days I do endeavour to practice the same for them as me. And this means I behave consistent with my insides and outsides. My feelings of self care and appreciation of me make it important to care as much and equally for friends and those I share time and have more intimate closeness. The intimacy here is about bonding and friendship and love of each other as we are, not potential lovers. And the women I encounter, I am doubly careful to keep my love for them as human and true as can be. I am attracted and love female company, I am clear and consistent inside and out and say so. In truth I love women, I don’t lie or cheat or say different, I don’t hoodwink or deceive. If you asked me if I prefer women to be my friends or men to be my friends, women always would be my natural preference And I keep due care for me and them. I have male friends, and as nature is with me, they are friends, I don’t feel love for men in the same way as for women, I do get brotherhood and can be as a brother. I guess that is how I am made up.

When I look back to my infidelity that time, when I truly did cheat on my partner, she hardly cared less for my immediate admission. I know why now. And that was her indifference to me and life experience of love. It was shallow and not too deep, and her love was full of defiance and other stuff. And I had in fact already been abandoned, she had just forgotten or not realised it was so, or worse just failed to leave me, I was quite a convenience at the time and quite accommodating in colluding with her. I was not good back then at loving me, or I’d have behaved differently and got over a very sad relationship which has haunted me for years. And in my ordinary world there are still hangovers in my mind today.

As the years and lovers have come and gone, some things stick. How to love and spot the difference of immature love behaviour and quite indifferent love, the inconsiderate type of loving which goes with either learning how, or worse the damaged love we get from damaged lovers who are yet to heal themselves. In my ordinary world the indifference of a lovers behaviour and their superficiality rings true very quickly, is easily spotted and easily shouts from my history and makes me see a repeat of the past.

In my ordinary world superficial and indifferent behaviour can be let go when I realise where another is in their experience, at the same time, I know as my heart finds those breaks yet again, those indescribable painful seconds, minutes, hours and days where its easy to languish in agony over a lovers indifference, where our denial of their lack of love for us is felt. It is certainly no consolation that they did not mean us to suffer, for indeed we do. And their sorrow at their impact on us is no less for their admissions of sly, secret of just plain indifferent treatment of us. That we know their denial is running its course is not one second worthy of our compassion as they inflict that hurt.

If we let them hurt us. Or we let them go far enough to get over it, and hopefully any notion of really caring at all. For denial in loving, its easy to suggest to our closest intimates that we do care and love. And for us receiving this love, we realise its as thin as air, and not worth a light. And still we hunger love. Well we need only break our denial and let go this thin veneer, this thing they hunger more than anything, for they have yet to grow it inside themselves, and we can see it if we get over our love of them.

Smiles if only love worked that way! When we have got love, for ourselves, others who crave it will absorb it, and think they give it back, they don’t necessarily realise they consume and exhaust rather than replenish.

In my ordinary world, “I don’t cry for yesterday”. I do feel that old pain and resolve to keep that experience where its best kept, in the past. As much as is possible for it takes some time to spot a truly gifted lover in denial of so much they don’t see it themselves and we can be sucked in with ease.

What made me feel these words were due? Of course that indifference is about, that superficiality is nearby. And it comes in silence and neglectful behaviour. Or worse in behaviour which is resting in their fears and lack of trust in themselves. Their denial and their preponderant behaviour, to send love in all directions and then wonder what to do with it, to the point of doing nothing at all. Least of all honouring the simplest promise, to communicate.

It takes one who has had those experiences, either to or from themselves, to feel it again and its disturbing in an ordinary world of now.

In my ordinary world of now, I can get over it a look more easily, let my denial run its course and feel less anguish. At the same time memories and deeper pains are just there to remind me of what is happening so my denial is never as great again, my acceptance of superficiality is broken and indifference through lack of due care is minimised. I don’t mind learners practising on me to an extent, I do not need fall for it. Evidence is presented in an ordinary world, we need only heed the reality and experience we are having to know the difference between the genuine and learning and damaged in denial.

Reality is something we need work with and for every day. Reality checks are needed as often as we feel that challenge to our senses so we can take our knocks and our licks as an ordinary world delivers.

We need not participate in manipulations of love and denial as offered even when they are enticing, for they are not real. The evidence of indifference from the simplest courtesy to most elaborate connivance is as evidence delivers. The way of living is to be present and aware, appreciate the why and because, and still keep true to our values and principles of living. We may hope for better days with more truth, and be secure in our own behaviour and consistency in this day, just for today. We need let others find their own way, and not upset our way of living. We cannot fix others or their denial or their journey to understanding love, we can maintain and keep straight our ordinary world and how we love ourselves and others right now and just for today.

~
Copyright © Don Oddy





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Thanks to

DURAN DURAN LYRICS

"Ordinary World"

Came in from a rainy Thursday
On the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly

I turned on the lights, the TV
And the radio
Still I can't escape the ghost of you
What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some are saying
Where is the life that I recognize?
Gone away

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

Passion or coincidence
Once prompted you to say
"Pride will tear us both apart"
Well now pride's gone out the window
Cross the rooftops
Run away
Left me in the vacuum of my heart

What is happening to me?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is my friend when I need you most?
Gone away

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

Papers in the roadside
Tell of suffering and greed
Here today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh, here besides the news
Of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrowed talk

And I don't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

Every one
Is my world, I will learn to survive
Any one
Is my world, I will learn to survive
Any one
Is my world
Every one
Is my world


Duran Duran

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