Dreams meet reality, Lady meets disappointment

My dreams were always going on somewhere, unconsciously, “up in the atmosphere, up where the air is clear… come let’s go fly a kite”… based in the wonders of the newly invented Television that arrived in South Africa in about 1975, and I was born in 1980. The speed of technological change in the last 35 years is BEYOND frightening. Especially as it took us 2000 odd years to get to inventing things, then, in a couple of decades, it has spiraled out of control, out of financial sustainability, out of moral and ethical control (this perspective being entirely dependent on the individual’s financial and moral position in life, as we all vary on this).

I have no record of what I dreamt of in my primary school years, other than a few ‘wishes/prayers’ jotted down next to pressed four-leaf clovers. Very simple things, like: ‘be happy’. Get ‘published’. Be ‘healthy’. Be financially stable. It seems that I haven’t quite managed to accomplish even those seemingly ‘simple’ things, which have now entered my awareness as not being so ‘simple’ in a country with a president who makes completely selfish decisions; a world filled with dishonest, money-grubbing people; with sexually consumed individuals who think of little else and even purchase audio visuals of sex because they are so consumed with their sex drives, lack of fulfillment and dissatisfaction; with ‘businessmen’/craftsmen/practitioners who are out to make errors and/or situations worse, so they can make more money; prioritising Television time over family time; pushing responsibility into other people’s courts, so one doesn’t have to be ‘accountable’, one can just pass blame…

In this context, how can my dreams ever be joyfully realised when the background situations are unchanging and things are not as they should be, when people set out to hurt and deprive others on purpose…? I never factored these ‘earthly’ conditions into my mind and Television observations when I was watching Mary Poppins flying with her umbrella…

Although I was very young when real-life reality hit in all its unsettling, perspective altering, life-changing, dream-warping capacities, I was still set into the escapism of Television and reading. Yet, as a pre-teen and then into my teens, I had to rely on the wisdom of those older than me… not knowing or even having the slightest hint of the fact that there may have been very little wisdom applied in actual fact. What was applied was “this is how it was for me, so it will be the same for you”, without the slightest acknowledgement or application of the fact that I was severely different in so many ways to my elders. For example: receiving ‘Mills and Boons’ to read, before I was even of the legal age to practice some of the contents therein, was absurd. Then on the flip side, other elders gave me the likes of Georgette Heyer to read, where the men were all gentlemen and the ladies all damsels, in an era when ladies and gentlemen still lived in full costume and practiced elegant conversation and public etiquette. Either way, the men were portrayed in a similar way: dashing, charming, caring, sexy and desirable. Nowhere was truth ever dealt with, or maybe it was and I never retained that part. No all day golf games with men leaving the club drunk. No men stuck to a sports game on a television set where conversation was virtually illegal. No men working from early hours until late hours. No men with umbilical cords to their cellphones, Ipads, emails and offices. No ‘reality’. Instead I had escaped to stories about gifts of roses, graceful evenings of dancing, card games and musical entertainment, long walks and ‘true love’. In my escape routes, however, there was nothing about the lust, the shag, and the purely physical satisfaction with total fear of anything beyond the surface of bodily function being dealt with. It seems that the eras I read about had no connection to the reality I would have to live with in the near future.

Reading Shakespeare, presented the idea of a love where a man would be articulate with his words, poetical, creating tangible pages to reflect what he felt inside: that she was more lovely and more temperate than a summer’s day; that his love was set in poetry to make it eternal and place it there for all to read. Then the reality hits, no-one can confirm that anything was written by “Shakespeare”. No-one has proof of his handwriting, even his plays were written down post-humusly by the actors who played the roles. Historians don’t even know if it was Shakespeare or another more influential man who came up with them in the first place, nor if Shakespeare was straight or gay, writing for a man or a woman… nothing is known, it is all made up from inference, assumption and calculated guessing…

Then, watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, with their dancing, the ‘singing in the rain’, the moving, the romance; the building of dreams and ideas around dancing with someone like they do in the movies, was added to the mix of escapism founded notions. The reality – it is a movie. Fred and Ginger probably had moments where they had had enough of each other. Their rehearsal times were probably grueling and it must have taken hours and hours and hours to get that ‘one move’ ‘right’. Yet, as an audience, we just see them ‘getting it right’; and that is not truth, it is a moment of climax, not the journey to get there. ‘Dirty Dancing’: “no-one puts Baby in the corner”, followed by a public announcement of how: “Miss Francis Houseman taught me about who I want to be”. One moment, after one and a half hours of movie, and bam we have the perfect dance. Yet, off stage, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey, so I have read, did not get on and he didn’t want to work with her at all. Yet, “I’ve had the time of my life … and I owe it all to you” became the theme song, the theme dream for thousands of women around the world; and it was all based on an act, two actors creating a different story from their truth. What took dozens and dozens of takes to create on film, became a ‘that’s it’, ‘that’s what I want’ moment in the movie for all the lost, lonely, dreaming, hopeful single people in the audience. Their brains downloaded that moment and programmed it to believe it was that simple: A man can love a woman like that; and a woman can love a man like that. Now, in my real-life reality: I’ve experienced men being more nervous, more closed lipped, more unsure, more insecure and more scared than I ever expected them to be. In fact, I’ve been overwhelmed in some circumstances, and beyond confused, at how inaccurate all the movies I was shown have been when placed next to my observations. Although, I must admit, it may be all me, because I hear the learners I teach are scared of me too ;-), but they are young girls, not ‘strapping men’.

Then there were the musical films: the Vonn Trapp family, coming through hell singing. Singing as a happy family, finding song in their joy and troubles. Finding love in the midst of turmoil and escaping into the Alps to live on the love they have for each other. Dreams to sing with your family too. Dreams to be that blessed as to have a whole choir in one family; even typing the words now makes me think: “Seriously?”! Yet, there it was, and I know at least one person who rated ‘The Sound of Music’ as her favourite movie of all time. Listening to the stories of the cast years later, it wasn’t all plain sailing, they even shot the film in different locations so that it looked like the gates, the inside house and ballroom, the outside lake and dancing gazebo were all part of one house, they weren’t. As I recall, there was even a problem with the “I am sixteen going on seventeen” dance as Liezel had sprained her ankle…

Then reading Jane Austen and all the romance of Mr Darcy and Captain Wentworth; ‘Emma’, ‘Persuasions’, ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and any of her novels, so much love, with so much insight into relationships and humanity, also added to my unrealistic notions. Yet, when I visited Jane Austen’s last home and learnt about her spinster life, her disease and ailments, her fighting in a male-dominated world and her challenges, I realised that the novels were the dreams, the observations, her self-expression in a fallen world, they weren’t the reality.

The brain takes in what it sees, assimilates it, attaches it to the network of thoughts and makes it part of the internal goings-on of that human being. Somewhat like a computer only using the software that it has been programmed with. Five seconds of seeing something and it becomes a permanent part of that human being; an indestructible part. Yet many people are so blasé about what they see, what they go to, what they take in… whilst absolutely every one of those things will have an effect. Everything becomes permanently lodged inside the eyes that took it in.

I can’t change my childhood intake of poetry, dancing, singing and romantic ‘happy endings’. I also can’t get that to merge with a guy’s intake of pornography, sport and chauvinism. I can’t give up the hope in goodness and love, and I can’t take on society’s ‘masculine’ acceptance of brutality, male dominance and belittling of other human beings due to biology and self-entitlement…

As I look around my school social circle and see how many of us are still spinsters, and it is the majority, it seems to be becoming an accepted social norm, cheaper than marriage and divorce; no, it is not desirable to be alone either; but is it worth giving up all the love of good things to accept such unacceptable things?

Is it better not to have been exposed to the realities that I have seen and thus blindly jump into the legally binding contract of marriage only to learn of those inescapable realities afterwards?

Or is it better to know beforehand that you can’t change him; you can’t force him to give up what he has been brought up on and believes is ‘right’, be it having many girlfriends, smoking/drug/alcohol addiction/reliance, pornography, work addiction and/or the like… and just let him go and be the human being he has chosen to be on his own?

Dreams and reality: Can they ever meet? Has reality kicked out dreams and being ‘better’ altogether? Is reality slowly and completely abolishing hope? What a horrible thought…

Will the cycle of people choosing this broken world over a better way last forever, even with so much knowledge, proof, information and works that show it doesn’t have to be so?

Oh dear Lord, I hope that dreams and heart-yearnings do not end up lost to this degenerating, temporary world… all of those stories, poems and movies had to come from somewhere good… “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever

Part ONE: If you are a ‘victim’ of divorce, don’t read this

By fascinating twists of fate/God, I ended up at a “Singles’ Evening” last Friday night. Following a church leaflet, an art exhibition and then personally knowing the organiser, by the end of the week I had promised I would come along ‘to keep the organiser company’. Walk into the event and bam these guys arrive at your side and introduce themselves… it was rather weird to have guys I didn’t know just ‘appear’ out of nowhere all of a sudden. Anyway, one in particular ended up being around for most of the night, and being a meet and greet in a Christian capacity, I naturally told loads of stories about the awesomeness of God in my life and how different my journey is to all the ‘traditional’ followers and ‘church/pastor-guided’ followers. How I take the “God and the Spirit are IN ME” more seriously than ‘they are in someone-else, whose soul I can’t see for real’… I shared, he asked loads of questions and I answered. I listened to his story about himself, and then, as was the point of the exercise, I drew a symbol on his name card in order to ‘represent’ him, according to what I had heard. I won a prize because one of the organizers couldn’t believe how spot on I was after such a brief interaction… So, the evening continued with a dance class and I ended up partnered with him, which I thought was a blessing in disguise, as the guy could not dance to save his life, so I ended up teaching him. We were, however, supposed to be changing partners, which another guy pointed out, so that happened and the new guy told me off for leading, which frustrated me because it was a swing and he was dancing it at the pace of a waltz! GRRR, UGH!

From dancing we went back to the tables, and thus the original guy. He confessed that he had become a Christian when he was 21 and dancing was forbidden, so he hadn’t danced since then. The church had also forbidden him to choose his bride, they chose her for him and he wasn’t allowed to court her, so he spent time in “fervent prayer”, and, after that, he married her. Surprise, surprise the marriage ended in divorce… but get this… he said that he believed if he had have courted her, then maybe they would not have wed, but at the same time he believes his ‘fervent prayer’ and Bible clarifications had shown him that he was making the right decision. Thus, he feels that the Devil was in the words that were fed to him and his marriage didn’t work because of her lying. He didn’t believe his ex-wife was ever a Christian and thus he was a victim in the whole thing and he was angry because she made him divorce her, which now puts a “blemish” on his “perfect” Christian record! But he is ok with it all now, he has accepted it.

Oh my greatness! BAM – in my humble-met-this-guy-once-opinion – I got it. I got why he was still single. I got why she couldn’t be with him. I got why he was probably often depressed and was using God as a crutch. “Victim” “victim” “victim” replayed in my mind… Seriously, he is a grown man! He is supposed to be responsible for himself, he should be as much to blame as anyone else that his marriage failed. How on earth can any woman live with a man who is expecting to be treated as ‘perfect’, we live in a fallen world, there is no such thing as a ‘perfect’ human being? How can a grown man, who made the choice to sign the papers, made the choice to leave, made the choice not to give his wife freedom to make her own choices and believe what she needed to believe, made his own choice not to court her, made his own choice to let others decide his destiny, claim “I’m a victim” – and I’m not embellishing here – the words “I was a victim” literally came out of this guy’s mouth. Like he was expecting God to live his life and his wife’s for them. Expecting God to “act” and “make” their marriage work. Expecting that “God” would intervene and “make” them find each other and they had to do no work…

They went to counseling he said and that should have made things work, but it didn’t… She went to counseling, that is a BIG DEAL, that is an affirmative: ‘I’m in this to make this work’… no, this guy didn’t see it like that – he saw himself as a ‘victim’, that he was the only one who was “Christian”, that he was the only one … BAM – if you are thinking “ONLY ONE” and you are married – BAM – that’s the thought that will make you become “ONLY ONE”, why? Because that is what you have thought, put out into the Universe, ‘prayed’ in your unconscious… and God grants us what we ask for… marriage is: “We”, “Us”, “Together”… NOT: “Me” “I” let’s sit in our corner alone and know we are ‘victims’…

I went home angry. Angry that people are allowed to wallow in this ‘victim’ nonsense. No-one is a ‘victim’ if what has happened has been created by their own choices, their own actions. They are experiencing their own: CONSEQUENCES. I couldn’t have a man around who was permanently reminding me that I’m not perfect {not saying this was the case for this guy, it was just an impression I got}, that I’m not … not… not… that will kill anyone, everyone… I think what got me the most may have been that: Here was a man who was a missionary, going out to people, spreading God’s word and I’m wondering if he’s read it? God tells us we are not victims, that we are sufferers for HIS Glory, that we have to live through HARDSHIPS to become more like Jesus, more empathetic with others, to become weak so God can be our strength. We, as Christians, do not suffer because we are ‘victims’, we suffer because it is a way to learn about being human, a way to experience things that those who need to be saved will hear from someone who has been where they are, knows the hell of divorce, of abuse, of neglect, of pain and whatever else we journey through. Whatever circumstances of suffering come our way, which they have to on this broken planet, Christians know it is being lived through for the Glory of God. The choice as a Christian is to see the positive, see the learning curve, acknowledge God’s strength and power to get us through it and then use it to uplift others… it is NOT to go around saying: “That woman has blemished my perfect Christian record!”

Oh my word! What crossed my mind: What is this guy sharing in his ministry? That God wants you to be perfect? That God wants you to ‘be good’? That evil makes you a ‘victim’, so you don’t have to take responsibility, because it’s ‘the Devil’s fault’; it’s ‘the ex’s fault’, it’s ‘the church’s fault’? What crap!

Nothing we CAN DO can make God love us more; NOTHING WE CAN DO can make God love us less. Here I was thinking that Christianity had evolved to understand that it is has nothing to do with us, and everything to do with God’s Grace. Here I was believing that those out their sharing God’s love, understood what LOVE is – kindness, compassion, forgiveness, patience, generosity UNCONDITIONALLY… not you have the option of: “victim”…