In 1983 Galway Kinnell won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I’ve read a few of his collections in awe. I ran across these words from him and it really touched me.
I’ve written so many pieces about love and how right and wrong it can be. Mr. Kinnell’s words actually make a lot of sense to me. I love the line: “If you’ve been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there’s no right person, just different flavors of wrong.”
I’ve often written the words, we attract who we are. You may have been in relationships where you totally grew to hate or severely despise the other person. Why? Because some of that very behavior we despise in another person is within us. We attract and are attracted to people who cause us to take a deeper look at ourselves. I’ve always maintained that God put certain men (and people) in my life to teach me some valuable lessons. If you take the time to sit back and think on past relationships with honesty, you’ll realize that person showed you things about yourself that you needed to know. It may have been painful but the lesson was there to learn. For me, that’s what Mr. Kinnell means by wrong in some complimentary way.
In loving someone else we can only give what we have. Period! We can’t give them what we don’t have. We also can’t be for them what they aren’t. The bible refers to it as being unevenly yoked. I refer to it as loving equally. When it’s not equal there will always be someone who has more power. There will be someone who gives more. The only place that leads — is to resentment. So how do you know if you’re in an equal loving relationship?
When you know within your heart that everything you have and can do, your partner already has and can do for him or herself.
No one comes without static cling. We’re all flawed. It’s literally impossible to find someone who has every single thing we desire in life. I guess the idea in this piece from Mr. Kinnell is accurate, we find that special person who is wrong for us in just the right way and our scars fall in love. If done with an open heart and complete honesty, we heal those scars through love.
What do his words mean to you? Please share.