Heart of the Matter

I’ve been in New York City now almost 4 months and for the first time since arriving here, I went back to Boston this weekend past. The experience overall was fantastic. Boston is my heart, oddly enough. Odd because I was so determined to get out and am still so happy I left. But, like I explained to Kent and Stefano, I think it means so much to me because that is where I really came of age. I started there at BU when I was 18 and left at 24. In between were some very formative years and many amazing experiences. Seeing the people there, that have been my life for the last couple of years was fulfilling in a way I can’t describe. The comfort there is not only from the familiar it is from the shared experience or the camaraderie (a camaraderie I share with even the city itself).
What makes me start my entry that way is because that situation is a perfect example of how it took me time and distance to understand how I truly felt about that situation and its place in my life. I find it ironic (read as: trite) how we tend to better understand a thing’s place, when it’s gone, more so than when was there. The perception of negative and positive spaces and how it’s used in design and art follows right from this (no doubt).
In the every day, this plays out in simple ways: looking down at your wrist to realize you watch is missing… the awkwardness of a room with one piece of furniture missing or moved… or immediately dialing that special person’s number before realizing they are unreachable. I wrote some time ago in “Feast, Famine and Fasting” about the idea of removing one’s self from things to gain perspective on them (like the Buddhists suggest) but this is an update of sorts.
The update or continuation of that lesson is both sentimental and practical. It is summarized by refrain lyrics from Don Henley’s Heart of the Matter (recently remade by India Arie on her new CD that just clicked for me):

I'm learning to live without you now
But I miss you sometimes
The more I know, the less I understand
All the things I thought I knew, I'm learning again
I've been tryin' to get down to the Heart of the Matter
But my will gets weak
And my thoughts seem to scatter
But I think it's about forgiveness
Forgiveness
Even if, even if you don't love me anymore

Forgiveness is the take home message. We often leave, move, or remove, places or things, from our life at a point when enough emotional energy has built up (often times anger or dread) to make the separation happen. The result is huge pieces of us are carved (read as: torn) out and negative space is created.
In that negative space we learn and gain perspective, but that is not the end. It can’t be. The cycle needs to come back around to the forgiveness part for us to incorporate the lessons we’ve learned back into our lives. We need to forgive ourselves for our failings and learn from them, forgive others for their transgressions and accept them as people and forgive the world for not being perfect but accept it for being what it is. While sentimental, the practicality in forgiveness lies in its ability to allow us to move on to a place where we relate to the world in a more real and more mature way. As we grow, our perception of, and how we relate to, the world needs to change and grow if any of us are to become anything more than we are. If we don’t forgive, and accept, we can never incorporate pieces of us (friends, lovers, memories, experiences) back into ours lives, leaving us full of holes. Those holes are our life, our experience on this earth. With people, years or memories pushed away we push away the very things that make us who we are and that is unacceptable. Wholeness is the only way to growth and forgiveness is the only option.