We Come with Strings Attached, Happily

Last week I heard a story.

It doesn’t have a happy ending.

The man doesn’t even know it yet.

A woman was talking, about her friend, a soldier. The story broke her heart.

I overheard.  I wish I hadn’t. 

The man, a soldier, doesn’t have a name to me, but I already know his heart. And I cry.

I read an article the other day, written by a woman, a feminist, who believes women should be able to play around, just like men do.

No strings attached.

That feminist would raise up that soldier's wife as her idol.

The problem is in life when you have no strings, you are not walking free, you’re not flying, you’re not dangling over a precipice with finesse, you’re in a flailing free fall.

That’s true if you are a man.

That’s true if you are a woman.

We are equal that way.

Life is meant to have strings.  We tie our hearts together as family, parents, friends, as lovers, spouses. We tie our hearts, we’d weld them if we could, in a big knot and hope to be close because the world often isn’t. This crazy planet can be a down right ugly, cruel, unforgiving place. But we don’t have to be. It takes guts to love, because life is messy and love can be confusing, imperfect too.

It’s only the weak who believe you don’t need any strings.

It’s easier to believe being close is about being distant. To believe passion is better dispassionate. They believe we can mate like a house fly and buzz off, no strings.

No strings attached is not for the strong, it’s a philosophy for the weak.

Here’s the conversation I overhead, while traveling in another city. My ears can’t stop hearing it, so I had to write about it.

The man was over in Iraq, a kind man. His wife back home decided to have an affair, a brash one. In the crowd celebrating the soldier’s homecoming from Iraq was also the adulterous man with whom his wife had cheated. In front of the husband, the two pretended like nothing happened.

The soldier will never know. Or so she thinks.

In love, you don’t get to lie and keep your strings, it nets out to zero, the vortex of null. You start a free fall. Saying this, triggers anger in some. Truth hurts.

Whether we like it or not, our life is packed full of strings-- we build deep connections, lasting attachments, caring friendships, expressive passions. When pull all that close and never let go, we reveal and fulfill the deepest piece of our humanity and destiny. 

Or we cut the strings, like cutting the cords of your parachute.

It’s fun while you fall.

It’s never pleasant to land.

But our hearts always do. And it crushes. Whether our life does too, is a choice. An unforgiving one.

This woman will have her pile of lies and she’ll loyally pull her clump of illusions around like a security blanket that simply hurts to keep. She’ll have the remaining frayed bits of deep attachments that she’ll keep accusing as being worthless, unnecessary -- treating them like bits of toilet paper stuck to her shoe that she keeps wanting to shake off. But they will drag behind her forever, until she understands their worth, pulls them in and reconciles her deepest attachments and passions with her destiny.

Unlike what that feminist demands from life, there never is such thing as “no strings attached." Thank God for that—us stronger folks love our attachments, our "strings", the people we adore and we pull them close. Strings never go away, they are our deepest destiny.

Until then, we’ll find that woman, and men and women like her, in her elder years dragging remnants of the strings she cut, the shreds of her loves and passions that dangle around her like frayed bits of rope of a failed parachute. Lonely, bruised, with a desperate need to fix something or someone else, she'll rage at anyone who says men and women need strings. Because her life depended on cutting them, every time.

Sadly, that isn’t freedom.

It’s bondage with a crash landing.

Meanwhile, I pray for the perseverance of that soldier’s heart when he finds out, because he will. I hope he knows his passions are never severed when another person flails out on a free fall. When you find out, it hurts, sears, burns like crazy. It knocks the wind out of you. It blasts your heart.  But it is the one who cheated whose destiny is crushed. Meanwhile, the reconciliation of Hope is his to have.

Comments

[shelly]

Very well said. You write beautifully.

Shelly

[Lynnis]

I remember telling my children while they were growing up, "You play, You pay". It might not be today or tomorrow, but someday the price will be paid.

Another great post. Keep em coming!

With Faith and Smiles,

Lynnis

[Anna]

I felt this story in my marrow. Affairs are not only for the married, for I am that piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of my Mother's shoe. With caller ID and false friends as her scissors she runs hard and fast away. Shadows cannot be outrun nor can children and grandchild be nurtured from afar. We are connected by the mother of all strings-the umbilical cord.