I have been saturating my soul in Brazil’s musical gift to the world— bossa nova. I am a subscriber to the image of how a heart can open and close like the shutter of a lens. We are not constant loving creatures. There are ebbs and flows.
Life is not one thing. Love across the decades takes us along the banks of a river. Some segments of our journey blessed with glorious mirror pond like parts of our journey where love’s stillness helps soothe the thirsty explorers of the heart, in all its contours, all its unfathomable backwaters.
Heartaches come in all its myriad forms. Self-inflicted wounds are the result of blind inexperience. Deeper regrets happen later along in our journey. We will remember how with our own hand and fool stubborn self we lose our way.
Intimacy is not all of love and is not the key currency of passions realm. Intimacy when it blooms strikes at the core of the illusion of separateness. Our mirror neurons work involuntarily, sympathetically as we become conscious of other’s emotions. Having a firsthand view of the interior life of another often can bring us closer, especially when this closeness might fit our emotional goals, we may want to be close, and if it fits with all these other aspects of what we may seek in a partner it can help us find the courage to breech our fear of commitment.
How a mother’s love helps nurture children, how our excitement changes us when we attend a high school dance, the charm we might feel talking to a co-worker, the accidental conversation with someone that might evolve into friendship, the first chance encounter with someone we are instantly drawn toward, all of these many kinds of experiences are the result of our steering life through the center of what we trust and know, what we doubt and fear.
Writing comedy as I do most of the time, I tend to focus on the love struck. Because I enjoy characters struggling with problems their emotions cause. It is not so much the struggle of running away, it is more the fun of the character becoming self-aware that their comfortable life without a partner provides them with a sense of control and serenity a relationship will inevitably challenge.
To get into a relationship requires energy, lots and lots of energy, the symptoms vary, often it is distraction, daydreaming, obsessions, insecurity, fear of our own sense of self worth. It also requires the energy of courage, the willingness to bare ourselves to the scrutiny of someone now we simply terrified of losing.
One of the least understood elements of so-called fiction is the fact that for our story to ring true it must be created from what all of us know to be true. Fiction works by bringing believable characters to life.
Actors, writers, directors all understand something about this fictional dynamic. Sex is one part of a story, the anxious banter between potential suitors is by far the key. Efficiency matters too. Our characters have to take action and we need to protect them, be sure we’ve constructed our characters well enough to carry the story along.
I am drawn to using this device. I want to know how my characters love, if they still want to love, if they are willing or not to use their hearts potential.
You will find useful information about how our loving works through meditation training, sometimes psychologists help us, counseling from friends, sometimes its just being honest with ourselves. Books, music and film do what they can to help.
Of course, paramount is how our mothers and fathers teach us, partly by example, partly by having the courage to be emotionally available. Then, we have to trust that the Universe has encoded into our DNA all the navigational tools necessary for us to make of our world the loving life our time here among our own kind can be.
In this sense fiction has great power, because so often it speaks to our human journey, the power of our heart to manifest a deep and profound intimate contact with a partner. Vows of until death do us part— that gets close to the fantastic opportunity of our being here.
Bossa nova is music that tugs at our heart strings—
