‘Where does your Romantic soul come from?’
This was my answer:
I was born with it, of course. Being a Romantic has little to do with being romantic. It isn’t about padded velvet hearts and bunches of red roses, even though the hearts and flowers thing can be a minor expression of a Romantic’s approach to life.
As I see it, being a Romantic is all about having an inner sense that all aspects of the physical world and the life we live within it are, at best, echoes or reflections of something more profound, more real, even of something perfect. And that, I think, is the nub of the Romantic’s problem.
Deep down we’re searching for perfection; we’re on a driven quest to find the Holy Grail, even though we don’t usually understand or express it in those terms. The difficulty that causes us is that we know, deep down, that perfection doesn’t exist on this level. That’s why we become frustrated, why we take things greedily and then tire of them quickly, why we go through life constantly questioning whether anything has any real meaning. The problem is that the brains we’re born with as humans are hard wired to seek answers and goals externally, not internally as we need them to be. And so we ride off into the world of relationships, landscapes, literature, music and fantasy. We take and take everything we can find, but it’s never enough. And eventually we realise that it never can be enough because everything at this level, however beautiful, thrilling and engaging it might be, is essentially flawed. And then we feel bad about the whole thing because we leave in our wake a string of broken dreams among the non-Romantics whose hopes we’ve consumed along the way. That’s the point at which I think I am now.
Oddly enough, this doesn’t depress me as you might imagine. It has the opposite effect. It frees me to see things for what they are, so that I can put each experience into a bag and carry on collecting without being conscious of the growing weight. It’s why memories mean little to me these days. If all physical life is a reflection, memories are no more than a reflection of a reflection. Which doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy and talk about memories. Of course I can, it’s just that they seem of little import now.
But I think the big point about being a Romantic is this. I’m coming to think that being a Romantic is preparation for becoming a mystic, and that being a mystic is one form of preparation for becoming enlightened.
As you know, I’m not a one-lifer; and when we talk about the oldness of souls, I wonder where this places me. I don’t know and I don’t think it matters. If being a Romantic is one of the steps along the way, then that’s where I am.
3 comments:
Very well said. It resonates with me.
Well Jeff, this post of yours is by far the best description of a Romantic soul that I've ever read. It's no longer a dirty word! Romantic as in the popular definition of hearts, flowers and fluff has me reaching for the bucket, every time.
It's resonating with me too.
Er... two women approved of something I said. On the same day.
I have to go and lie down. Thank you.
Post a Comment