One More Perspective

After the kids were asleep one evening, my second Husband drew my attention to the lyrics of the Eagles song Lying Eyes, which was an unusual initiation from him in and of itself.

We sat listening to the song line by line together, something we only did twice in our haphazard six-year marriage.  It is, of course, about a woman in a marriage-of-convenience who slips away from time to time to seek out so-called forbidden affections.  By the end of the song, I had been mesmerized by one line in the first verse: “Every Form of Refuge has its Price.” On first hearing, it would forever be tattooed on my psyche, a key to my better understanding life as a human. As I was still in awe at how meaningful and even liberating this one sentiment was (or Golden Truth as far as I was concerned), the song ended and Husband2 wanted to know what I had thought of the song. I repeated the line that had, like lightning, struck my brain and told him I thought it was brilliant. He looked shocked, stupefied, and exasperated; quite the reaction from a man who spent his years cultivating a permanent poker face. He managed an: “Is that what you got out of that song?” I confirmed, still under the line’s spell. Seeing his reaction, I quickly followed up repeating the song’s cheater theme, but there have been many songs about cheating and I was neither impressed with that, nor picking up on what he may have been putting down. “Every Form of Refuge has its Price” had instantly delivered to me a sense of order in all human chaos. My Husband2 may have been trying to tell me something that day, but he unknowingly gave me a gift in a song I would never on my own discover. The Eagles were popular before I arrived in the US, so I missed them in real time.

If you asked my Children today what my life philosophy is, they may say a number of things, but one thing they will say in unison is the annoying ways I’d repeat this Eagles line, attempting to bring awareness to them about their thought-processes and consequent choices. Life is full of tradeoffs, and sometimes, excruciating ones; accepting that’s how life works has brought tremendous relief to me and I had hoped would eventually do the same for them. No difficult choice I have ever made didn’t have consequences, good and bad. In fact, over time, decision-outcomes I had initially perceived as good (and those I predicted as bad) would sometimes trade places. That’s life, too. Humans are often not good at predicting outcome, but I digress.

By keeping in mind “Every Form of Refuge has its Price,” I believe one can be more self-aware, more deliberate and mindful of life’s perpetual tradeoffs. Here’s an example:

As a forty-nine year old Mother of three twenty-some year old adults and twenty-eight years into my own career, I spend a lot of time mentoring women who are Engineers, Scientists and other professionals.  Many of these women are also pondering, or thoughtfully foregoing Motherhood, expecting their first child or juggling their young children. For those struggling to decide whether to become Mothers, the pressure is exorbitant. For those pregnant, they are developing their boundaries around what kind of Parent they wish to be and how they wish their Partner to relate to them and their shared responsibilities. The Moms of young children are feeling the urgency of those tradeoffs around career and parenthood, often in ways their Partner may not. Knowing the pipeline for Executives who are women is already fraught with hazards, trap doors and blind forks, I do my best to share my professional journey with them and project forward; to illuminate the tradeoffs for them.  Women often don’t realize they give away with both hands their own autonomy and agency by not developing boundaries around their own self-worth.

There is not a day I don’t think of this Eagles line…once one embraces its message, it’s impossible not to see it play out everywhere. I actually find this comforting, as it takes a lot of pressure off my decision-making. There are consequences any which way I go with a decision, and it’s nice to remember that. Otherwise, the human brain is inclined to pull its owner/operator into bias, which favors one’s ego and the recency of the elements influencing the decision.

No matter what news item we see, the tradeoffs are detectable, even if we try to merely approximate them. Corporations transforming, people migrating, Scientists discovering; usually there is something we lose in the transactions to realizing a gain.

Near-and-dear to me are those struggling with sexual and/or gender identities because the metamorphosis toward publicly owning our identity is an excruciating one. In fact, many never arrive. Some people burst out of their closet at a young age, and others layer on more and more disguises over the years until they actually believe no one can detect they are not straight or not gender-conforming (or both), whatever the case may be. I was already in my late thirties when life decided it was time to drop me into an abyss again, this time by meeting a woman who would turn on lights and music in rooms I never realized were in the whole of me.

There are many people walking this Earth with so much internalized homophobia they would rather deny themselves completely than to risk acknowledging what society so readily rejects: divergence. Except, there is always an irrefutable consequence for such repression of the self as the authentic energies of the individual become warped and ooze out sideways. I need not recite data associated with Catholic Church sexual crimes against minors and Nuns, Baptist Church Youth Directors having their way, Husbands bringing sexually-transmitted diseases home to their Wives; all illustrate the undercurrent of consequences when people aren’t forthright about their needs and desires. The irony then follows: Families all too willingly hide their molesters but eject their gays. I sensed this deeply even before I understood my own sexual orientation. I have always been drawn to energy that comes from a person in harmony with themselves. Quite reliably however, I have found most churches stifling and reeking of dangerous hypocrisy.

Onto a different example…I have had five sexual partners since the age of eighteen. In the 21st century, Western world, that’s quite few. I have known many single individuals who over a decade or two of premarital dating amassed dozens, even hundreds of sexual partners, and many live-in partners among them, all in the course of finding their path, and Spouse in life. No eyebrows are raised typically; today, there’s an expectation one wouldn’t dive into marriage head-first. This is especially true among those with advanced degrees, and always, for men. Now, if I say I have been married four times, the vault of judgment opens up, and all manner of daggers fly forth, as if I am the neighborhood trollop. With this judgment, the social stigma is then placed on those who embark on an earnest, legally-recognized, publicly declared effort of care and commitment, not those who, on a trial-basis, mimicked it. No, I’m not actually attempting to cast reverse judgment, and I am not pursuing a moral high-ground, but I am illustrating the (above) title point.

“I guess every form of refuge has its price”

The second thing my Husband2 wanted me to see was the movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  A movie or a song suggestion from him to me was so very rare that I would take him up on it and pay very close attention.  I must say I was incapable at the time to take in the entirety of the movie and instead, focused on the struggles of Maggie, the Wife.  I missed a lot, and Husband2 allowed me to be with my experience of the movie.  It probably gave him confirmation I did not have the capacity to relate to it otherwise.  At that time, now a full twenty years ago, this was very true.  At that time, I had no experience in the struggles of nonstraight people stuck in heterosexual lives, nor did I have the wherewithal to understand the ensuing damage.  If this movie was a piece of communication from Husband2, it did not land.  Looking back however, all I can think is life is often so very complicated.  Moreso for those who believe, often based on the very brutal rejection they experienced, they cannot be themselves and must trade off some element of who they are. 

On a lighter note, my Wife and I just returned from a vacation I planned as a surprise for her.  To be clear, my