Remembrance

Sometimes I get that feeling
That lump within my throat
Your presence eludes…
For a moment
Your big black
Vehicle comes riding
Smoothly down the street
A reminder of what is no longer
There

A song plays—
your favorite?—
chills evoking a dissipated mood
Fruit, spaghetti, fish:
Favorite foods
Must memories stay fresh so
Clear?

Then one day
You in the flesh
She walked by your side
Not you but like
I recognized the look
Not her but like
The vacancy in her eyes
Together but not
Yearning from her
Distance from you
And it hit me
As painful as any of your words
She was me and he IS you, so…

I had to go

Love is not demanding, constraining, stiffling or conditional of who you are or want to be. Love should be uplifting and liberating. what many people call love, I believe, is possession. A relatingship, marriage or otherwise, does not conote ownership. What folks call love in this modern society is in many cases is based upon magical fanticies and social conditioning. Much of what we want out of a relationship centers upon "what I want" and has little to do with love and being loved.

If you remember, Neo, the hero in the film ‚The Matrix‚ was given a choice by Morpheus. Choose the blue pill to remain in the illusory world of the Matrix, a world that was an elaborate simulation designed to hide it's inhabitants from who they are. Or, choose the red pill and face reality, for the first time with life's real challenges and ultimate successes. We all know what choice the hero made and he was consequently transformed as were those around him.

We all face a similar choice regarding our relationships. Unfortunately, too many of us choose the blue pill and opt to remain in a relationship world that is a figment of our media induced imaginations that in reality have little to do with the happiness we claim to seek. Welcome to the Matrix.

Recently, Michael Baisden, a nationally syndicated radio personality, aired a show titled All About the Benjamins. The question asked during the show was how would a man feel if his significant other made more money than he did? Also asked was what would be the impact upon men if their women were more educated.

Overwhelmingly, the men that called in expressed insecurity regarding what they perceived as the women having more materially, and consequently, more power than they did. Many of the women that called in described negative relationship experiences where they had greater income or education.