Clean Sheets

I've been reading this book, The Art of Loving. I like that it's a book that agrees with a lot of things that I think about (for the most part). It has some interesting ideas about human motivations behind love, different kinds of relationships, and the author considers to be the best, or more mature, kind of love. One nice phrase that stands out is :

Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.

This rings a lot of bells in me. Especially since the time I came across that great quote by Katharine Hepburn (Love has nothing to do with what you're expecting to get, only what you're expecting to give -- which is everything). In keeping with this quote, the author writes: 'love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practice only in freedom and never as the result of a compulsion."

I appreciate that he recognizes the act of giving as the expression of aliveness. I think our society views giving as 'giving up' something, when it fact, we all know how much better is feel to give than to receive. What are we so afraid of losing? In a sort of indirect way, I was always ambivalent about sharing things with people: friends, ideas, interesting articles, more recently interesting blogs, interesting artists, interesting films. I was afraid other people would like them! Why would I be afraid of connecting with someone on these things? Well, for friends it's clear, I didn't want them to want to be friends with my friends, or my friends to want to be friends with them. Clear case of insecurity. As for interests, I think it's because I wanted to hoard the things I thought were cool, to maybe feel some sense of separation from others, to feel like I knew about something special and they didn't.

Now when I think about it, I don't mind so much sharing ideas and interests. And I think i'm ready to go out of my way to share them with people (ie. follow-up on a 'yeah, i'll send you the link' conversation that happens in the wee hours between me and someone I barely know). Besides, there's too much stuff on the internet for me to know about.

Better to release it into the universe.

(and write certain things on paper... I had a great idea for an article title about archives... forgotten...)

No wait! It was State of the Archive, an article i'm thinking of writing in the future about archives and how they're high tech now (which I have no idea if they are, that'll be resolved in September!) But I like the play on state of the art, and the state of archives.

Yes, saved in the blogosphere. Like so many other thoughts.