Dreams, Expectations and Perennial Melancholy

Honoré de Balzac, French novelist of the nineteenth century and author of the vast Human Comedy, once wrote that 'disappointments measure how great our hopes once were'. His numerous works often illustrate this very point, from the young provincial going to the big city with dreams of being a literary sensation (Lost Illusions) to the young law student witnessing the greed and depravity of those surrounding him in the heart of Bourbon Restoration Paris in which social climbing through deceit and marriage is the only way to become successful (Père Goriot).

In addition to disappointment, there is the theme of disillusionment, the finding out that things are not what they seem and the little of the world that is black and white reveal only a removed prison from the gray that evolves and warps and undermines one's perception of the world. The idea that there is no place to stand in this world, that wherever we are is prone to change, erosion and the this too shall pass of Biblical implication is the only constant. The platitude that the only guarantee is there are no guarantees has offered little comfort but remains a nagging truth.

Balzac was an early influence on my ideas and how I regarded the world. I read his novels in my late teens and early twenties and though I have not returned to his works, I still feel his stories resonate in my own life. And it's not that I experience perennial disillusionment or constant disappointment, it's just for every endeavour relying upon hope and expectation there is a balance. Balzac's characters recover and learn and though bruised and sullied, corrupted they persevere despite the emptiness they encounter in the world of humankind, an emptiness made stronger with its institutions of marriage, bureaucracy and church. 

Though they don't succeed at first, they find their appropriate paths and depending on their character sink or rise though its often a question of perception. In our world, money, a house, time to travel and kids are the accoutrements of success and the hope for them a solemn reminder of how much of our lives is determined by what others expect of us.

For these so-called successes often act as weights and in the instance of the individual who makes money he or she is often chained to his or her work (once I overheard a cell phone conversation in which a middle-aged man,  most likely a business man said "You know Tom, it's how it is. You have money and there's no time but if you have time, than you probably don't have money"). 

And yes, there's the model home, a house to be envied but time isn't kind and with all its passing reveals new repairs that need to be made and remodeling that need to be undertaken. Our lives are tormented by fashion and trends - we are afraid of being left behind, being outdated.

Travel is good but as Stoic philosopher Seneca once noted there is no escape from who you are despite where you are (or to put in succinctly in the words of Mr. Brady in the film adaptation, "Wherever you go, there you are").

And as for children, I routinely encounter young mothers who long for an hour of free time. They have their little ones and take special pride in their role as parents but there is a sadness hidden in the creases below their eyes. They dreamed of becoming a mother, their mothers asked them when they would become mothers and suddenly, they are and their other, more personal dreams have been placed aside.

And this is where I wander into philosophy when I ask what is the difference between what we dream and what we expect? And by dreaming, not what we do every night but what we strive for or believe is the rightful place we are meant for. 

There is the dream of having money and the expectation of what it will bring. The dream is fulfilled and sadly, there is no time. 

The dream of a new house but the happy house owner recovers from the honeymoon of ownership excitement and the expectation becomes a new bill to pay, a mortgage hanging over one's head like the sword of Damocles. 

Travel to escape but there is the weariness of travel and the longing to stay in the places we believe are more beautiful than ours. 

The dream of children, the longing to see our blood and lineage carried on, the joy and miracle of child birth but then the duality of expectation ensues. The new parent is expected to raise the child and the expectation of being fulfilled never arises. 

Perhaps this is why I side with pessimist philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer and writers like Honoré de Balzac. We begin naive but then it's only a matter of time before we realize that all we want has no meaning and will not bring us complete happiness. Shards of happiness and excitement are scattered here and there but desire has only taken us to the next desire and the satisfaction of one thing leads us to a newer void, a new hunger to satiate. 

Perhaps this is why I hate listening to the radio because music is only a brief distraction from the constant barrage of advertisements. There is no serenity it the voices that try to remind us we are not anything until we buy this or that product (and god do I despise the numerous radio disc jockies with their over-the-top enthusiasm for things crass and useless like clubs you have to go to and concerts you should attend... fuck off...)

For Schopenhauer, resignation from the will, the driver behind all desire is the only answer. For other thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, living the good life, a life free of akrasia (i.e. not being able to control of command yourself) is the best solution. If the desire is deadly or painful, don't fulfill it and be happy with your decision to detach yourself from the dark yearning. 

And I do believe perception is a large part of attaining happiness. For myself, I think happiness is a fleeting event in one's emotions. Disillusionment follows when we believe happiness should be our constant state. There is the climax of a reward or a gift. A wedding is a day of happiness but it's only one day. The birth of a child or a promotion is a cause for celebration and feeling elated and high only lasts for so long before diapers need changing and more hours need to be put in at the office.

We are happy but then we come back down. And being down where we usually are isn't a bad thing. Inspired by my mother, I have come to believe that melancholy is our default state of being. But here I must stress, I don't completely associate melancholy with depression. I would argue that melancholy has a spectrum ranging from just below joy - that place in our minds and emotions where things need to be done and the quiet resignation of accepting the work and upkeep is paramount to persevering - to the sadness and disquiet one might experience when one is alone and there is no respite from the solemn thoughts of life, death and the perennial passing of time. 

There is no drug to heal the melancholy because we need it, it is very the home we return to after fooling around with happiness and joy. There is a contentment to melancholy, a pleasantness along with a gravitas. The fact that we push ourselves to smile is a sign of senility and sickness. A smile is a commodity of the customer service industry and I tire of the belief that it is necessary to help sell products based on the idea that it will ease one's mind and heart when there is no ease.

It is wonderful to dream but equally wonderful to bless the melancholy of daily life (and again, think of the spectrum of melancholy and not its traditional association with depression and down-ness). The beauty of dreaming is kind so long as we don't expect it to fulfill voids or hungers or nullify the perennial state of our getting-by in life. A dream that doesn't come to light is not a failure. Dreams aren't always successes in one's heart. I think we make up these expectations that something awaits us and will relieve us of this burden of being human. The damage of disappointments and disillusionment is a result of the ridiculous expectations we place on being alive.

We are all meant to die. It's the way it is. Being dead won't hurt but life will be over. Whatever dreams we had won't matter and the expectations will finally be purged. I feel the key to  making life good is enjoying the melancholy, finding peace in the aftermath of happiness. I distrust happiness not because it lies but because we lie to ourselves about its importance. The only hope we should have is seeing how petty our illusions and beliefs about life are. Whatever is grandiose should be immediately distrusted.

The Tractor Beam and the Fear of Loneliness

Growing up, I would often wonder why my parents still lived together. I never saw any sign of affection, they didn't hold hands nor kiss with any kind of love or tenderness. It was like watching two strangers live together, so little in common beyond having kids and a mutual history. They went to the same high school for a year, knew the same people growing up. When my mother returned from her West Coast travels, my aunt re-introduced them after a soccer match. 

I know in some way my mother wanted security and my father represented that. And in turn, my father wanted a rebel, someone different from the women he had met, someone different to help distinguish him from his brothers and sisters who had all married very staid people. 

And so they forged this marriage and it lasted twenty years. But they realized you can't love a representation. Masks are mislaid or re-painted and over time, my father began to rebel against my mother and my mother, tired of the suffocating security, realizing it had made her a prisoner, looked for love elsewhere. The marriage crumbled slowly, they kept up appearances but my brother and I both witnessed the fighting, the unhappiness, the strain. My brother and I were in a way divided as I sided with my mother and he my father. (Thankfully, in our adulthood, we are more open to both our parents and see them and love them for them as opposed to a 'side' to pick.)

When they separated at first, I wasn't angry but I was. I said it was about time - my exact words -  but I was bothered they couldn't have done it earlier. I hated my adolescence and having your parents split apart during the rockiest years of your own growth, doesn't give you a firm foothold in the world. 

But I continued to study them, watch them in the wake of their dying unity. And in turn, their lessons have become my lessons. The question of love and how to love never leaves me because there have been occasions where I almost followed in their footprints.

In one instance, just turned twenty, newly home from B.C. I met a woman who worked at a local print and frame shop. How we met? I just went in to drop off my resume. We ended up talking for about two hours about books, poetry, painting and music. The next time I dropped by, I suggested we go for coffee. She was pretty but I was more attracted to our conversation. I didn't have a lot of friends at the time and wanted to be wanted. And here was my chance. 

It started out as a kind of friendship that fell into a relationship that fell back into a friendship only to get more complicated by becoming a relationship again... all in the course of four months. She was the first woman whose body I explored. I had seen women naked in strip joints and the magazines my father stored on the top shelf of his closet. But here was a naked woman, in my presence, under my hands. And I kept telling myself, you're only attracted to her being attracted to you. The desire to see her naked, to kiss her became a kind of addiction but when we went out in public, I couldn't hold her hand, ashamed of myself for not being honest with both of us about how I truly felt. 

The sexual chemistry was there but my attraction was based solely on what I have come to call the 'tractor beam'. With this woman, I was responding to her, reacting to her affection as opposed to being stimulated by my need and longing for her. The attraction wasn't mutual. During our time together, whether kissing or fooling around, a part of me felt like it was floating around, watching the scenes unfold. Kissing her, I felt this pity for myself because I wasn't going after what I truly wanted. I was settling. 

Of course, it had to end. After a day trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake, walking downtown, holding her hand, I knew I was being a fraud. We broke up the next day, quickly and painlessly though a part of my regretted it. I know I made the right decision and hoped something better would come along.

The 'tractor beam' didn't affect me until many years later. Dating fell by the way side due to being ill for so long - just getting through a day was an ordeal. But when I started to consider the opposite sex again, I either met the unrequited, the hard-to-get type or the 'tractor beam'. This occurred when I was living out west. I met a young lady in a continuing education class. We hit it off as friends and hung out. But I started picking up mixed messages. If we were friends, how come she made an effort to emphasize her cleavage? She also seemed incredibly sympathetic about everything I talked about. At times, it seemed I could do no wrong. 

Then one night I suggested we become friends with benefits. No, that wouldn't do for and it was like I offended her.

Shortly after that, I invited her over for dinner. We drank a full bottle of wine, watched half of a movie together. She said she had to leave and the tractor beam took over. 

Maybe it was just seeing her go, spending another night alone in my bed that made everything less real to me. Of course she was pretty - she's very attractive, brown eyes, nice cheeks, a soft voice - but I wasn't in love nor felt the hunger for her beyond the sexual and basic need of comfort. 

Throughout our time that evening, I kept telling her I wanted to be her boyfriend and that we could work it out. But I was lying to myself and her and the friendship which had briefly become a relationship only barely recovered in the weeks thereafter. Waking up the next morning, I regretted my advancement to her - though she had given me enough cues and hints that would have tormented any sane, single man with sexual yearning - and wrote her an email that morning.... I should have waited though. Receiving my email, she left work emotionally destroyed. Angry emails found their way in my inbox and we didn't speak for two months. 

When we re-met, she had found someone else...

And I suppose, I'm writing this now because I'm concerned it might be happening again. I've met someone recently, enjoyed our conversation but I don't see her as the kind of woman I want. She's had her trials, her disappointments and it's true, there's something fascinating about her but fascination isn't love (nor is infatuation which is kind of a sad obsession). 

And it's one of those things where if I go somewhere, I seem to keep meeting her. I feel the quiet tragedy build up and pray for the strength to avoid any miscommunication or moment of weakness. It makes me wonder if most people are together simply because they are afraid of the loneliness that surrounds them. Working in a winery, I see couples come in everyday and I wonder what percentage are happy or just merely content. Many appear to be doing well, or maybe they've been drinking wine and wine makes everything lovely and everyone lovelier. Maybe people need a little bit of blindness to care for the person sleeping beside them. 

And so it is, I'm tired of this pattern I've fallen for - actually several times... though for the sake of brevity, I'll leave writing about them for another occasion. At least having this post I can come back to it, read my thoughts, hopefully avoid my next disappointment with myself. These words are my own testament and having written them will no doubt sustain my awareness, reminding me not to be weak but strong in my approach. I've been lonely before but I would rather be on my own than be with someone I have no honest affection for.

This I can truly state.