30

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken.

29

ONE NIGHT, I HAD A DREAM

COBB: You create the world of the dream. We bring the subject into that dream and fill it with their subconscious.

ARIADNE: How could I ever acquire enough detail to make them think that it’s reality?

COBB: Well, dreams, they feel real while we’re in them, right? It’s only when we wake up then we realize that something was actually strange.

          —Inception, 2010, Christopher Nolan.

THERE WAS A PARTY. At a restaurant some friends were waiting for me. Near to that table, there was a man drinking with his friends while watching the revelry. Suddenly, he got up and headed to the party. He asked, “Who are you waiting for?” They said the party was for me. He responded, “I’ll wait for her here.” Soon after, I arrived to that party and I found him there. I asked him, “What are you doing here?” He said he didn’t want to lose me again. We hugged.

Actually, it’s 4.17pm. A worker is dragging boxes, placing them in line. His colleague sorts out the valuable stuff, getting rid of the trash. This is a mechanism we see at the marketplace, but also in our dreams.

While we sleep, our psyche carries out a job of selection and classification. The unconscious is the part of the psyche which sorts out our thinking and our feelings. That part of our own world that we only know.1

There are many types of dreams. We remember some; we forget others. Though if we dare to dive in, we find our most secret desires. Even, as Freud stated, the oneiric world represents our ideal sexual images with no obstacles.

True enough, through dreams we can obtain some valuable information about ourselves, and also repressed impulses. Probably what we don’t know about ourselves becomes who we truly are.

Freud, as a neurologist, found out that dreams are the key of the soul. He broke up with the philosophical thinking of the extraordinary qualities of a man—his ability to think and reflect, his rationality, and above all, his consciousness—so much so that his publisher, receiving the manuscript “The interpretation of dreams” in 1899,  placed 1900 as a publishing date.

Soul messages become recognizable in the interpretations of dreams through psychoanalysis. As dreams are attempts by the unconscious to resolve a conflict of some sort and, as they say, words spoken to us in our dreams should be taken literally, in no time, I made a beeline for the man I had dreamed of.

To play psychoanalyst here, I don’t think my dream needed deeper interpretation, but I realized that life had something to show me. It actually did.

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1 It’s remarkable how this is one of the hindrances we bump into when confronting death. To say goodbye to that inner world that only belongs to us.


Copyright © 2012 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved. 

28

ON GIVING

  

You give but little

when you give of your possessions.

It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

There are those who give little of the much which they have—

and they give it for recognition

and their hidden desire makes their gifts unwholesome.

And there are those who have little and give it all.

These are the believers in life and the bounty of life,

 and their coffer is never empty.

It is well to give when asked,

but is is better to give unasked, through understanding.

All you have shall some day be given;

Therefore give now, that the season of giving may be yours

and not your inheritors.

—Khalil Gibran, The Prophet.

27

MARRIAGE: A FRAUD AND A FAILURE? (II)

I can’t give you anything but love, baby!

This is my friend Harry Allen. 

He’s married.

He likes his wife.

It can happen.

          —Married life, 2007, Ira Sachs.

A COUPLE OF MONTHS AGO, I was heading to the Library when I heard a woman saying to another, “I married Mark because of the circumstances.”

I stopped abruptly, saying to myself, What circumstances?

Truth to be told, I would have followed them since I was dying to keep listening to the conversation. But I am not a stalker, so I missed the answer. To be fair, I’m not here to be judgemental.1 However, I thought that I would not like to fall into that trap. Whatever it was. Call it solitude, call it money, call it emotional needs, you name it. Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal it.

Likewise, many times I have heard divorced people blaming their former wives/husbands for all their miseries. The woman or the man they used to “love2,” now he or she is nothing else but the enemy3.

Yes, my Dedicated Readers, human marriages are a total failure and a fraud. If we scratch a bit, we find two people who manipulate each other. Two self-centered people who hide their own benefits.

Personally, I’d bet for a spiritual marriage. A marriage where two people love and respect each other unconditionally, with the purpose of growing together. It exists only when it is not necessary for each person’s survival.

  

So what’s the foundation of a spiritual marriage?

The foundation of a spiritual marriage is FREEDOM. I don’t belong to anybody. I don’t possess anybody.

I’d like to reproduce the words of Joel Goldsmith4, whose speech I find luminous.

“An individual remains an individual, not only from birth to death but, in fact, long before birth to after death… We will never lose our individuality… Each one of us has individual talents and gifts that should not be waived in marriage. Therefore, in spiritual marriages there are not ties but freedom. We cannot say the same of the human marriage. It is true that in the spiritual marriage, both agree to let each other free at the time of getting married. That’s all I have found out in thirty years, freedom is what makes possible such things as happy, peaceful and successful marriages. The ability to let the other go free and live every man his own individual life, yet sharing with the other without demanding… Neither the husband nor the wife has rights; they both have the privilege of giving, but not the right to demand anything from each other.”

  

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1 Who am I to judge other’s people life?

2 I put love in quotes because I don’t think it was love.

3 Unfortunately, I’ve never heard, ‘I loved that man/woman, and I will love him/her, even though we are apart.”

4 Joel Goldsmith was a spiritual healer, mystic and author of The Infinite Way.

Copyright © 2012 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.

26

MARRIAGE: A FRAUD AND A FAILURE? (I)

POLA DEBEVOISE: He was nice. I thought he’d have lunch.

LOCO DEMPSEY: Listen. The first rule is, gentlemen callers have got to wear a tie. If we begin with characters like him, we might as well throw in the towel… The thing to remember is, a man in the cold cuts is not as attractive as one in the mink department.

POLA DEBEVOISE: He was cute.

LOCO DEMPSEY: Sure he was. I never met a gas jockey that wasn’t.

POLA DEBEVOISE: Is that what he is?

LOCO DEMPSEY: You bet your life he is. I know, I married one once.

                                                      —How to marry a millionaire, 1953, Jean Negulesco.

ONE DAY, when I used to suit up, I went to an important meeting. I took the elevator up to the last floor, where a hostess was already waiting for me. She walked me through what seemed to be an endless maze of rooms. The conference room had a breathtaking view of the city. Four men and I were standing, waiting for the bigwig of the company. Soon he came in, greeted everybody and made me sit down next to him.1 My butt had not touched the chair when I heard:“Are you married?”

Oh boyyyyyyyy…

I managed to sit down realizing that this was a very personal question, completely inappropriate for that setting. But right away I considered it was inoffensive, that I had no reason to make such a big deal out of it. I gave him the short answer.

“No.”

To my astonishment, he blurted out, “You are very intelligent.”

I must confess, my Dear Readers, that these words have been dwelling on my head since then. So this man of experience was telling me that single is a synonym for intelligent. And who doesn’t want to be intelligent, huh?

Tell you the truth, I have never been in such a trouble. No boyfriend ever popped up the question. Neither did I. But, looking back, I’ve noticed that over the years my understanding about marriages has drastically changed.

Is marriage a fraud and a failure?—as Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) declared in his book in the film Arsenic and a lace.

Is a single woman smart?—as the bigwig rushed to shout.

To play sociologist here, I can’t say a categorical yes to any of them.

Sure enough, men and women are driven to get married, but for different purposes. Men usually tie the knot in search for a status, and they look for a companion when they are financially secure. Besides, when they start to see his friends walking out the aisle, social pressure starts to hit hard—though it usully comes later for men than for women. On the other hand, women feel the need to get married for biological matters: to procreate; aside from getting the emotional support. So when a man, who has already a certain position in society, likes a girl, who has received the baby waking call, they sign the deal that comes with ‘till death do us apart’. Voilà.

Nevertheless, this well-trodden circuit has exceptions. Of course. For instance, now women are delaying marriage to pursue their careers; and some bachelors, who lived The War of the Roses in their childhood, most likely they will leave holy matrimony for the old age, or even for the next life.

So, yes, my Dedicated Readers, people from all walks of life get married because of a mix of love and social pressure.

From the outset, it becomes obvious to me that those reasons are too weak. You can pull your gun in your sleep, but one thing you got to admit: Not everybody hears the same drums; not everybody dances at the same pace. I am not against marriage, but I am against conventional marriage. I might or might not marry my companion. This is not an important matter. The nub of the question lies on the foundation that underpins the relationship. Next week, I’ll throw my thoughts. At the meantime, I’ll say a little prayer for you.

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1 Although that was not a meeting of friends at a bar, I understood that a man—he could have been my grandfather—prefers to sit down next to a young woman. 

Copyright © 2012 by THE PYTHAGOREAN STORYTELLER. All rights reserved.