Prioritization of Her Freedom

I began thinking today perhaps I do not want her to ‘lead me’ so much as I want her to have ‘final authority in our relationship’, after all I do not feel so inadequate to life and the living of life as to ‘need leading’, or that she is so superior to me that she is able to make decisions for life my life better than I am able. Then I thought (again) it really has less to do with authority or leading so much as wanting her to be actively happy chasing her desire and passions, since if she were actively happy we would then be happy together because I know I am happy just to participate in the process of pursuing her happiness together.

And this led me to this (general) idea and theory of my particular uxorious erotic truth: I often saw my wife valuing individual freedom (hers or mine) over relationship concession or compromise, and valuing the individual pursuit of desire and passion (hers or mine) more than any compromised joint pursuit of desire and passion. While I myself continued (in general) to value passion and desire over individual freedom (or perhaps to value passion and desire as the primary reason for valuing freedom), I think I eventually learned to generally value and prioritize her freedom and desire over my freedom and desire in most things, to sublimate some gratification of my individual desire to the gratification of her desire. (I think this theory is at the border of having conscious explanatory power (and note here too)  for me so I’m not sure quite what to think of it yet).

I wonder if neither of us want her to ‘lead me’ so much as to simply not have her individual freedom impinged upon by having our lives lived together, by having our desires living together, our passions alive together.

Leadership and Management

Even when he’s wrong, tell him that he’s right, / You can take the blame for him day and night. ~ Rudy Stevenson

In recent reading about leaders and managers I realized they do many similar things (planning, organizing, coordinating, controlling, staffing, and motivating), but they do them from different places. ‘Leader’ comes from an Old English and Germanic verb ‘laedan’ meaning “to guide,” “to cause to go with one, or lead,” “to travel,” “to go,” and as a noun “the one in first place”; leaders stand in front of people and inspire them, causing them to go. But ‘manager’, from Latin ‘manus’ meaning ‘hand’, stands behind people and manipulates (same Latin root) them; a manager uses people to accomplish things, and management is the ‘handling’ of laborers and “the art of getting things done through people” (Mary Parker Follett). When people buy into a vision together, someone leads – when people are a resource to buy, someone manages them.

I exaggerate to make a point, of course; in reality there’s a large swath of overlap just as in any female led relationship there’s a large swath of overlap, and so my wife’s response to my uxorious erotic truth, “I don’t want an employee for a partner”, wasn’t very surprising. And though my honest response was I didn’t want to be her employee either, at the time I had a hard time differentiating exactly why, until I thought about blame.

When mistakes happen a manager must fix the bottom line, and so a manager usually assigns blame for mistakes to an employee and (constructively) criticizes inefficiencies. But such blame assignment is a responsibility, extra work and burden, for which managers get benefits and pay recompense; my wife knew she’d be a woefully underpaid manager. Yet fortunately, I wasn’t looking for a manager either, didn’t want a blame assigner to stand behind me to use and manipulate me; a blame game of bottom line efficiency I think we both knew instinctively was an untenable relationship framework for our love symbols.

Moreover, my wife is, as many people, painfully aware of her shortcomings and also feared being an underqualified leader, especially if she had an employee without opinion, or creativity, or ideas, or character, for when her mistakes are compounded by my unhelpful silence, as the responsible manager, she’d only ‘have herself to blame’ for what was produced. But just as she didn’t understand I don’t have an employee blame shuffling mindset, she neither understood I wanted to free her to seek and obtain her passions in life and I don’t mind sharing mistakes on the way.

Everyone has setbacks and obstacles while learning what they are here on earth to learn, but if we are on a journey together, if we have bought into the same vision, then as partners in something together I am always happy to voice my opinion in order to help us along as best I can, so that we journey forth together as best we can. And sometimes in order to learn value and worth she sometimes needs to make experiential mistakes, and so sometimes even though something seems a mistake to me and I may disagree with her, I follow on anyway because I want to participate in her learning too. I am not with her in order to get to the bottom line or even the finish line, I journey with her to be with her, to be a part of her journey and be a partner in her happiness. I want love and companionship with her ambitious daring and most passionate self, and I want to help her passions and life lessons to fruition, see her satisfied content and happy.

I’m sure we’ll travel some places side by side and split leadership fifty-fifty, and sometimes perhaps I’ll lead because I’ll simply be better equipped for some stretch of road, or because she’s injured, or who knows why, but mostly, because she knows where her happiness lies better than I, she’ll lead our partnership as we journey together.

And as a leader, I only want her to try to make mistakes constructive (criticism) by educating and inspiring me so we become better and more intimate fellow travelers, more able willing and worthy of our journey together and of our goal, still yet partners with one in the lead position. I think we both want a partner in a journey, a dream, a vision, a partner in passion, someone we can dynamically and intimately interact with on our way somewhere together.

Arguing with ‘Wrong’ Passions

Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still. ~ Dale Carnegie

I think what I meant about social and political issues is that it’s hard for me to tell other people they are wrong for getting the meaning they get from the things they get meaning from. I do act against some things that others believe adamantly, yet I wouldn’t tell those who vote against what I vote for, for example, that they are wrong; even though my position may not win, I couldn’t tell someone they are wrong for wanting meaning and significance, for acting to obtain it. I may disagree with their actions and even want some people policed or put in jail for their harmful actions (for example), but if they truly believed they act meaningfully ‘right’ by their symbols and framework, wouldn’t tell them they are wrong to try gaining meaning and significance with the symbols and framework they have.

Of course I might argue they should know better than to have such a closed or untenable (in some way) framework, someone should teach them better, or have already taught them better; yet I wonder if these ‘shoulds’ and ‘oughts’, dependent as they are upon another different framework being ‘right’, are an attempt to invalidate (and justify the invalidation of) a person’s humanity by taking away what they do have, their symbols, their framework, their life meaning and significance.

I certainly believe in educating those who want education, those who are open to thinking to considering, to dialogue, to dialectic, to the education of their frameworks and themselves; but when they are not open and willing, when they are convinced of their rightness and will consider no alternative to the rightness of their meaning, significance or framework, I think it is wrong (in addition to likely being unfruitful) even to try to convince people of anything different. I believe there may be some things we shouldn’t or can’t effectively argue about; and though I may vote against them or stop their actions if I can, I rather feel I should treat other’s passion as valid to their humanity, as my passions are valid to my humanity.

I don’t believe anything should go, but when I think about the larger picture of our common humanity, inevitably someone’s passion does win out, someone’s human desire wins, the power of meaning and significance wins, (some part of) humanity wins significance – and significance building through passion and experience is, to me, part of the fascinating point, if not possibly the whole point, to being human.

Different People, Different Passions

I haven’t always been this way, but I avoid confrontation and the threat of confrontation in general these days, avoid social and political issues, though I often pay close attention to people’s opinions because they are so indicative of their frameworks, of their symbols, of their passions, and of the meaning and significance they find in being alive. The flip side of feeling there are so few people I can have a thoughtful topical discussion with is that there are so many people with whom I may discuss their opinions and passions, their frameworks and symbols, their life meaning and life significance.

Of course on one hand I can afford to ignore so many issues because my social and political circumstances allow me to ignore. Yet on the other hand it occurs to me people may have been ignoring and watching other people for millennia even when it may have behooved them not to; and I like to think they simply liked their particular outlook, attitude and framework more than they feared whatever social and political threat they faced. Of course on the more cynical hand, they may have feared changing their particular outlook, attitude and framework (or feared the consequences of standing up in society) more than they liked what they could have stood up for. Yet all these people, their attitudes, passions, symbols – their lives and the significance of their lives are different, and I can’t help but think, different isn’t necessarily wrong.

So while there lurk issues of immediate relevance to the subjects I generally explore, such as female supremacy for example, I simply avoid it. It isn’t just that any sort of supremacy isn’t my thing (and it isn’t), it’s more accurate to say I have different passions, different symbols and a different framework. So I don’t argue, I either watch in fascination or ignore, as with so many social and political issues; while these things matter to people and matter to current life and the living of current life they are fully functioning symbols and flashpoints to people just as much as people who firmly believe and hold opposing points of view.

Yet a line must be drawn; at some point I have to say I am going to do something about this issue – but without an current exemplative issue I have a hard time knowing quite where to draw that line.

Passion Connection

Last night my wife asked me if I thought my deep, uxorious, abiding and passionate love for her would ever stop (No), and how I could be so sure, after all even I admit a changing and dynamic mental framework is part of living life, surely there is the possibility the framework might change to reduce or even exclude this love or its features.

And this made me wonder (again) how much I am framed by my framework, how much my framework addicts me to the symbols I use and the behaviors I choose, how much of me is what I am by nature, how much of me is what I am by nurture. I have always been certain any meaningful answers to these kinds of questions are always a little bit of both, my uxorious character for example is likely a bit of both nature and nurture, yet I rather think now there is more to it than only these dichotomies.

There is always been reference to the je ne sais quoi about a woman, and I have seen and felt this, met and experienced its flavor about many women; yet there is something more I have only ever experienced with my wife. The very way she experiences life and the world about her draws me, pulls me, connects me not only to her but also again to more of myself; between us it is as if there were an integrated circuit made from the many different parts of our selves.

Of course, in a way this might be calling forth some unnecessary mystery around our human nature, or naming our nature by another name; after all it is easy to attribute these sorts of experiences to some scientistic evolutionary attunement to potential mating compatibility. Yet again, for me, such theories work well for things I do not sense, but they have little explanatory power over what I experience; and I, like everyone, need explanations in symbols I, and my mental framework, can understand. Even if I am simply discovering new worth within an otherwise previously known fact, the symbolized significance and meaning (to my experience anyway) is in no way diminished.

So yes, I believe all of us in our basic and essential selves have a transcendent awareness, more than consciousness, more than a mere solidity of self, but an ineffable meaning and significance brought about by our very existence. If we close our eyes and focus long enough we can find that center place of self, and occasionally we might glimpse it about another person, that je ne sais quoi.

Yet while my wife has her interior center sense self and I have my interior center sense of self, sometimes I do believe I do more then glimpse her interior center sense of self. It is as if I had her ‘interior hand’ between my two ‘interior hands’ and can feel the definition, shape, temperature and texture of her interior too, as if there is a connection between us but one external to both of us (cf. internal destiny and external fate). I don’t believe such a connection comes by nature or by nurture, but I know it is more than I have ever experienced before in my life – and why I do not believe my deep, uxorious, abiding and passionate love for her will ever cease.