growth and learning

i remember living in a place before. it wasn't necessarily a good place nor necessarily a bad place. at times it was fine but for the most part it was the world that i suspect most people live in most of their lives. emotions were few. there wasn't much that was really cause for celebration, but there wasn't much heartbreak or desperation either.

i see a world (or a potential world anyway) where there is light. there is -life-. i've come part way between the world of grey, part way to the world of color. along the way you start to see and experience a wider range of all that is human emotion. you begin to really feel and you begin to slowly comprehend that there is so much more, that all that you thought you ever felt before, all that you believed was the possible range of emotions that you could experience, was only a dulled down, limited portion of the true range of possibility.

and as you start to gain some understanding and some experience with more and more emotion and the understanding of what that can bring, you begin to experience more and more of it... the words aren't quite adequate, but it's like you've only ever -seen- a symphony before, maybe from a distance. and maybe you could kinda slightly feel some vibrations from it. and then you're allowed to see it from a much closer vantage point and you're simply astonished at how much richer the experience is. and you think how much you've missed out on and how much richer this new sensory experience is and -finally- you're fully human and experiencing the full range of what there is to experience.

and then a little later, somehow, you're actually allowed to hear the music, and WOW!!! again you realize how -little- you actually sensed before, how little you got of the total of what was there to experience. you thought seeing it from up close was a million times better and richer than what you originally knew. but now this, to hear it ...it's a million times better yet.

and then you start to wonder, is there more? more than once before i -thought- i was experiencing the full range of sensation, only to find that i was only getting a tiny portion of it. now i've TWICE learned that what i thought was the sum total of it before was only a tiny portion of what was possible... so now that i can -hear- the symphony, does it stand to reason that there is still yet much more to experience? what would it be like to make music together?

now make all the previous experience only seeing a single person playing an instrument. and then seeing them up close. and then hearing the music. and then imagine what it would be like to hear a symphony!

that's what it's like to find -the one-. what seemed like the whole of human experience before i see now to have been a stilted, restricted version. knowing her, feeling the things that have passed between us i am just now -hearing- the music. and i see the orchestra members and they're standing around, but they won't play music yet. they're not allowed to. but i know, i know how wonderful that music would be, if only it were free to be.

the down side to expanding your range of emotions and feelings is that you don't seem to do so ?evenly?. that is, the good and the ?bad? ends of the spectrum don't expand at the same time. i can almost see the color and the light and imagine what the sweet music would be like, but it's just out of reach. while i have been blessed to already feel more good and love and warmth and want than i thought was possible, i know that there is so much more yet to be discovered. on the other hand, i have hurt so much more than i ever thought a heart could hurt. i can see and guess and believe in the infinite amount of good feelings that can yet be found, but i don't have to guess at how much more the hurt and lonliness and longing can be than what i thought they could be. i know. i know because my heart fills with emptiness and my chest tightens painfully as it struggles to contain the void. i know the desperation and the loss that comes from not having.

it's so strange that the increased emptiness of emotions is, although negative, so rich, so powerful in the sense of loss and emptiness. i don't know how much more increase in emptiness i can take before my heart simply implodes. the ?richness? of the hurt brings with it the promise of infinitely greater reward, of immeasureable joy, of happiness, of contentment.

newtons' third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. and then there's the nagging fear that, newton's law aside, the universe is not fair. and that bad is not necessarily offset with the corresponding good.