Learning to Love: Get a Life

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Get a Life

Loving is not about making others ‘your life’ or as Joyce C. Hall, creator of Hallmark cards, would have had it back in Kansas in 1910, be  “a reason for living”.

Relationships have changed throughout the ages as gender and sex participation evolves in society and politics. The rules for relationships for my parents and their parents are totally different, to the rules in relationships today and even different from those among younger generations.

The Lost Generation born between 1883 and 1900 describes those who fought in World War I, with relationships working side by side in the mills and mines to build a country from immigrants. The G.I. Generation, born from around 1901 through 1924 includes the veterans who fought in World War II, during the Great Depression and describes relationships that eloped to break away from Puritanical limitations. The Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1945, includes those who fought during the Korean War, much more aware of social acceptance as radio and cinema created  ‘popularity’. The Baby Boomers, from 1946 to 1964, marked an increase in birth rates after the War, rekindling hope in relationships as existential nihilism ended. In the 1960s, young adults and teenagers started the Hippie movement, making free love their banner with the introduction of ‘the pill’. The Generation X , from the early 1960s to the 1980s included those targeted by financial markets for sales, with relationships related to alcohol and fashion. The Generation Y, also known as Millennials, describes those born in the turn of the century, ranging somewhere from the latter 1970s to the early 2000s, accelerated by ecstasy and artificial ‘uppers’, as ADD and ADH became popular, with no commitment in relationships . The Generation Z  are those born after the early 2000s, with relationships identified with ecology, equity and a New Age order.

So when young adolescents today, try to develop their independence and still have their parents ‘fussing over them’, they often say “Mom, get a life” and they’re right. Where traditionally, we as parents devoted our time to our children, having had them be part of our bodies in pregnancy; having had them need us in childhood to survive; and having had them as learners in adolescence, as they become independent, they require us parents to shift the axis of our priorities, re-taking our own lives. The same holds true for our lovers. We cannot make them ‘our life’.

‘Getting a life’ requires retaking everything that spurs our inner passion. Physically: sports, dancing, travelling; emotionally: music, movies, art; rationally: studies, writing, teaching and spiritually: reading, contemplation and 're-learning how to love'. With it, however, we must also exact respect for our own right to independence.

 

 

Learning to Love. Eroticism

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Eroticism

“Praised be the three aims of life, virtue (Dharma), prosperity (Artha), and love (Kama)”. This is the introductory invocation in the Kamasutra. It goes on saying “Love is necessary to satisfy the mind; ethics, to satisfy the conscience; and spiritual seeking for peace of soul. Without food and clothes, the body becomes thin and weak. Without eroticism, the mind become restless and unsatisfied. Without virtue (ethics), the conscience goes astray. Without spirituality, the soul is degraded.” Thus, Master Vatsyayana describes the science of moral eroticism, leading to spiritual realization and not the sating of the passions or the encouragement of pleasure seekers.

Whether love surges from an abstract ideal or from a feeling or passion, it is manifest in the body. If there is no body there is no Eros (living vital energy). As a Science, eroticism follows natural laws; as a spiritual guideline it is a path of human development where “I”, becomes “We”. It all starts with the body and its senses.
Twitter wisdom says that without loving oneself, one cannot love another. However, it’s worse.…if I don´t like my body I will reject anyone who comes close, doubting his intentions, which I defensively see as malicious. In a society where the cult for a perfect body makes people spend fortunes for the physical torture of re-designing one’s body, it is hard to accept, much more, love one´s imperfections.
My boobs are beginning to sag and I am fatter. How can I love my body that way? (Thank goodness aging comes with losing one’s sight, so that imperfections are much less visible! ) What is heightened is sensitivity. Touch, warmth, softness, all relieve the tension of resistance that melts into the acceptance of a safe embrace. In the arms of our loved one, looks become irrelevant. It is all about feeling. Fusion begins with kissing, exchanging breath and chemical receptors in the saliva that unchain the physiological reactions of desire. In the Kinsey Institute, sexual therapy requires you to hug your partner and regulate your breathing to his or her rhythm. This allows us to develop awareness with a keener focus on our loved one. Thus we open up to a shared reality, in the here and now. Mutuality becomes commonality and the skin ceases to be a barrier. Time is suspended and the “quick of my being skips a beat”.

Learning to Love. Equity

L´earning to  Love

Gloria Ornelas Hall

Equity

Gender is ‘social sexuality’; the socio-cultural conditions that determine, what we consider ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ (not ‘male’ or female- which is physiology).
Although as far as 450BC, Plato described three sexes (male, female and androgynous), cultural and religious bias officially accept only two. In fact, up until 1986, when  ‘homosexuality’ was removed from the Diagnostic Psychiatric Manual of Mental Health (DSM III), it was considered a psychiatric pathology.

Freud, among others, believed man/woman were intrinsically bisexual. He wasn´t too far off, for during our embryonic development we have both, female and male reproductive potential: women develop internal genitalia from their Mullerian conduct, cancelling out their male Wolff conduct; while men develop external  genitalia from their Wolff conduct and cancel their Mullerian one. Magnetic-resonance imaging (MRI) has allowed us to identify the parts of the brain that are activated during emotional and rational involvement. From these, left-hemisphere reactions have been described as being more rational and logical with linear thought formation, relating it to masculinity; and right-hemisphere reactions, are related to femininity, with imagination, creativity, flexibility and holistic thought integration. In autopsies, homosexuals prove greater activity in the corpus callosum, which is the neural bridge between both right and left hemispheres, suggesting greater use of both.

Whether embryologic, cerebral, or psychological, men and women have more in common than rigid, western societies care to admit. Among their similarities we find: both men and women have testosterone and estrogen. Women in power, prove to have higher levels of testosterone, with greater aggressiveness and control. Men who help women with their babies have higher estrogen levels, becoming emotional caretakers. Men can even be induced to produce breast-milk with hormonal stimulation, which proves similar physiologic responses.

Differences however include those discovered by NASA that prove women are more resistant to death-threatening conditions, while men are stronger. The Kinsey Institute proved women and men respond differently to sexual stimulation, involving different areas of the brain during orgasm. Women take longer than men for desire and erotic stimulation to prepare them for orgasm. They are more sexually stimulated by audition than sight, which stimulates men, more.

Whatever our differences and similarities, men have potential to develop their femininity and women, their masculinity to be whole. For that, we have each other.