a walk, a white mocha, a good book, a good movie

since kt’s car caught fire, we took the opportunity to go for a long walk last night. there’s a starbucks down the street from our apartment complex so we each grabbed some reading material and headed out the door. it really was a beautiful evening. the weather was perfect and we didn’t get hit by a car on the way.

i love starbucks but it’s hard for me to go there to read. most books that i have, i feel like i have to commit several hours of my day to read them, otherwise i will get confused and loose interest. i think it’s because i’m a context person. i have to know what happened before, way before, in order to really understand and appreciate what’s going on in the present. so when i’m headed to a place where i know i’ll only have 30 minutes or so to read, i usually grab one of three books that are easy to just plop in and get great ideas from or be entertained in some way.

last night i chose M. Scott Peck’s “the Road Less Traveled”. i really love this book. you can read 5 pages and have a days worth of ideas to chew on. sometimes i love what Peck says and i want to let everyone read how he dissects and uncovers what is behind the common human interactions. even when i don’t agree with what Peck writes, i can always find one aspect that i agree with and then it’s fun for me to use that as a spring-board to understand how i see things.

last night’s section was an extension of Peck’s ideas about “Ego Boundaries” and their role in how we understand and define love. he mentioned how when a person falls in love with a person or a thing of interest (like watching sports or keeping a hobby), we make this first initial connection which is so exciting and is so pleasing that we start to remove these boundaries we’ve set-up for ourselves. we begin to venture out and discover this new thing of interest. so when we say we’ve “fallen in love” with a girl or guy, we’re at the point where we’ve discovered a deep pleasure and want to keep that sensation, even though a week before we never would have thought we could feel that way.

when you start to take down the “ego boundaries”, Peck explains that you start to take in parts of that thing of interest. so if it’s a person that you’ve fallen in love with, you start to take them into yourself, attaching yourself to them and in a sense, making them a part of you. but Peck also explains that we usually only take in the parts that we like. that’s why people start getting discouraged in long relationships because they realize that the person they’ve been so infatuated with, has distinct flaws. once you realize that all is not right with the world, you start to question what drew that person to you in the first place.

Peck explains that at that moment, you have the opportunity to experience the beginnings of real love. you can keep your “Ego Boundaries” down, allowing yourself to be stretched in ways that weren’t possible before because you really are being drawn out of yourself, your current understanding, and expanding yourself to take in even more. but if you don’t allow this outside force to work on you, then you start to rebuild your “Ego Boundaries” having only moved as far as you could move by yourself.

at the end of the section Peck writes:

“the temporary loss of ego boundaries involved in falling in love and in sexual intercourse not only leads us to make commitments to other people from which real love may begin but also gives us a foretaste of (and therefore an incentive for) the more lasting mystical ecstasy that can be ours after a lifetime of love. As such, therefore, while falling in love is not itself love, it is [the beginning] of the great and mysterious scheme of love.”

i love the idea Peck has of disassembling your boundaries, allowing someone or something from outside of you to come in and to change you, extending your view of the world. what’s great about this is that we already do it. it’s not an action that we have to consciously think about. we could be more disciplined in looking for ways to be influenced for the better. but it’s still something that we do everyday.

its as easy as trying a new kind of food, liking it and deciding that you might want to eat it again. or it could even be that you hate it. either way, you’ve experienced something new and it has changed you by providing you with a way to think about new things (or a new way to think about old things).

after those revelations over my white mocha and our white/black cookies (because i believe in equality), kt and i started our walk home to watch “Dan in Real Life”. i felt like the idea behind the movie was along the same lines.

in the end, it was a great night with kt.