A new perspective on an old poem
Marriage has taught me the difference between isolation and loneliness. Loneliness is an emotion you feel when no one is around. A person living a life full of love can still feel lonely in the absence of loved ones. Isolation is more of a psychological condition in which a person cuts himself off from emotional connections with other people. You can feel isolated in a room full of people as easily as when you're at home alone. I am rarely lonely nowadays since Mrs. Happy and I are almost always together. I still experience periods of isolation because my natural inclinations lead me to withdraw into myself whenever I feel a little "off." I have to fight against that tendency toward isolation because I don't want to cut myself off from my wife. It's difficult, but it gets easier every day.
Marriage has also taught me that my desire for physical contact, though it sometimes manifests itself in less than ideal ways, has its roots in something good and pure. I wish I could go back to the teenage Curt and tell him how to assuage that desire in a good and pure way. I don't know what I would tell him, though, since the only healthy way I have found to slake that thirst is with a wife. I would definitely tell him to guard his thoughts and stop his bad habits before they start. I would tell him that destructive thought patterns don't automatically go away when you get married, and how much better his life will be when he achieves a good level of self-control. The problem is, though, that the teenage Curt knew all that and still pined and fantasized and let thoughts run wild. College-aged Curt even wrote a whole poem about how he knew better and constantly failed in his struggle to keep his thoughts pure.
Adult Curt is doing better, but still struggles daily, knowing that a daily struggle is much easier and healthier than a periodic purging of impurity.
These things entered my mind today because I came across an old notebook containing sort of a journal I wrote in college. I had written a poem on one of the pages. In my life, I have written three poems that stayed in my mind beyond the day that I wrote them. The first one I wrote in high school. It dealt with the eternal struggle between men and women over whether a man should ever move the toilet seat from its down position. The second was inspired by a nasty foreman I worked under at a summer job during my college years. The last I wrote in my journal during a time when I struggled with loneliness, isolation, and a devastating desire for physical contact:
I know I am a fool because of this:
That no one but a fool would spend his day
In giving full attention to the way
A siren sings him into tortured bliss;
That such a fool is bound by hopeful kiss,
To think of her when "she" is spoken, stay
The heart that has been broken till the gray
Pale ray of sunset sets things more amiss.
My hopeless hope is just a fool's delight.
Conscious folly is a baleful omen,
The deepening of my heart's pleasing plight,
Heightened not by substance, but by woman.
My mind and body fight a fatal duel.
The victor shows me sure, I am a fool.
This was my first and only experiment in writing a sonnet in iambic pentameter. I'm not even sure I did it right, but there it is. I wrote it in July of 1994, less than two months before I first asked a Happy Acquaintance to eat lunch with me. That lunch turned into the deepest friendship I've ever had, which turned into my marriage, which I now celebrate every day.
