A Refuge from the Chaos

One of my favorite descriptions of what happens when two individuals come together comes from a poem, Rain in May, Cape Town by award winning South African Poet (who I had the fortune to study under at University of Cape Town), Rustum Kozain.

…where we lie down for one second against each other, staring over a cliff at the point where, I repeat, the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic do not meet. Who can say where that exact point is? Or is not? How broad and wide must be the region where two such forces clash, then bleed into each other. exerpt from Rain in May, Cape Town This Carting Life Kwela Books/Snailpress page 79

Images and ideas inspired by this poem have knocked about in my head often since the first time I heard it read in 2002. Although the images/thoughts have been ever present they have only, over the last week or so, begun to change and grow into something personal. I used to hear the words and envision the Cape of Good Hope as it appears visually, what human eyes easily perceive when looking out over the water. When I think of the surface of the oceans at the Cape of Good Hope I think of awe inspiring beauty that cycles through the calm and violence of weather and seasons. And until lately that is also what I thought of relationships. I even avoided the potential beauty of letting someone else in out of the fear of the turbulence that it would create in my life. I was convinced that was what a relationship would inevitably be. Cycles of calm and storm, and lots of work during the calm battening down the hatches and building the tools that would be needed for the storm. Who would want to get involved in something that was nothing but fear of pending disaster and lots of disaster avoidance work in between? What I am finally realizing, and am starting to see in that poem, is that a relationship has little to do with what lies on the surface, be it calm or turbulence. A relationship between two people is better reflected in the quiet stillness that lies below the surface.

What I am coming to understand about both, the oceans and relationships, is that turmoil and turbulence are not inherent parts of either system. Turmoil and turbulence generally only arise when exterior forces act upon them. This hypothesis is being proven over and over to me as I step back and look at what I am actually responding to when I am feeling frightened or upset in this infancy of this relationship that I am hesitatingly moving into. In nearly every case my feelings are not being affected by the relationship or even by the other person that I am getting to know (although it is easy to see these emotions as his fault). I am responding to forces that are external to the relationship. For the most part I am responding to my own fears and expectations. So rather than blame the other person for the turbulence I am feeling I have been stepping back and looking at where these fears and expectations come from and more importantly separating them from the current reality. At first this was a painful, difficult process, but as I get more comfortable with just enjoying the reality of the moment and my certainty in the destructiveness of expectations grows it gets easier and easier to remove them from the equation.

I can’t remember how many times I have been told that “relationships are hard work”, and yes, some of my past relationships have been A LOT of work. And this had always helped me to visualize/remember the turbulence seen on the surface. But Really?!  Let me clarify my new-found reluctance in this idea by including a definition of the word work; Work – exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil.  Wow! I for one do not like the idea of defining what it takes to nurture an intimate relationship with another human being with words such as exertion, labor, effort or toil. Yuck!!! What I am now realizing, at least for myself, is that this idea of hard work does not come from the relationship itself, it comes from trying to fight these exterior forces and that at the end of the day the forces acting on the surface don’t matter. The storms of life will always be present, but just below the surface there is always a silence, a peace, to be found. That is the space in which relationships should dwell. There is no ‘work’ to be done in this place below the surface.  It is a place that we can go and escape, a refuge that lies below the turbulence.  A relationship should not add to the chaos of life, it should be the place that we can go to escape the storms. The place where we are open and trusting enough to just be.

These burgeoning ideas of relationships remind me of snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef. The world underneath the surface is so peaceful and deep. Yes, there are still predators, but down there a shark is just a shark, the veil of deception seems flimsier. Or at least seems that way to me. We all have our own perceptions and expectations I can only write about my own. None-the-less I am confident that we do have the ability to find the peace below the surface in our everyday lives and in our relationships with those around us. It is in our power (and our power alone) to keep the forces without from disturbing the peace within. We have the power to make a peaceful under sea refuge out of our lives and our relationships.