Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site pucc-h Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!CS-Mordred!Pucc-H:aeq From: aeq@pucc-h (Jeff Sargent) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: Signals (digression) Message-ID: <1591@pucc-h> Date: Fri, 21-Dec-84 02:18:40 EST Article-I.D.: pucc-h.1591 Posted: Fri Dec 21 02:18:40 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 22-Dec-84 02:41:09 EST References: <1555@pucc-h>, <1882@sun.uucp> Organization: my terminal Lines: 41 From Sunny Kirsten (sun!sunny -- a wonderfully easy address to remember): > When in doubt, ASK! There is NO substitute for openness and honesty. > If you give these, and presume the same, you won't be wrong. Just hurt. > Jeff: Please read I Corinthians 13. I have just done so, and I am well aware that I only minimally possess the spiffy characteristics of love as written in that chapter, or in this definition of love written much more recently (1982) by a much less notably saintly man than the apostle Paul (namely myself): "Love is not being attracted to and desirous of the good in someone else; love is giving *to* someone else out of one's own store of good (small though it may be). Love is finding out the other person's needs and wants, and working to fulfill them. Love is helping and/or freeing the other person to become everything God intends him/her to be." To quote one of my favorite put-downs, "A nice theory!" If I could pull off loving according to these definitions, I'd have no problem with relating -- because I would no longer be concentrating on trying to get people to relate to ME, but rather on ameliorating their condition, meeting their needs. The real problem here is that I seem to be trying to escape the existential loneliness that is part of the "human condition", and which (so I'm told) afflicts even those in the best of marriages and/or with a good supply of close friends. I had so much loneliness shoved down my throat when I was a kid that I reject it utterly now. I have been told that the only way to make any progress from this point is to accept this loneliness, learn to live with it, admit that I am defeated in my attempts to blow it away (that does not sit well with my overweening pride); but I can't accept this, because it sounds like condemning myself to a life of permanent misery. Comments on this from others who have wrestled with this problem? (And please try to avoid committing my great sin of waxing preachy or didactic.) -- -- Jeff Sargent {decvax|harpo|ihnp4|inuxc|ucbvax}!pur-ee!pucc-h:aeq Jesus has creched the devil's system.