Compatibility
January 31, 2008
31 January 2008
Caveat: This is a philosophical post that perhaps dwells too long on minutia and perhaps trusts its little epiphanies a bit too much.
Lately I’ve been having an active dreaming life. Specifically, former boyfriends appear, morph into other people, and become part of these long drawn-out narratives that attempt to resolve whatever disagreement has kept these people out of my life. For example, last night, the main character was a combination of Heath Ledger and someone I haven’t seen in about 10 years. As the dream went on, the person became less like Heath Ledger and more like the person I haven’t seen in a while. When this happened, the fantasy story line dissipated and I started recounting the real story about this person to my dream-world friends.
When I have these dreams, I wake up with an eerie residue of these people, as if I have really spent time with them. As if something old has been resolved, or even more like something I had forgotten about has been dug up to remind me or its lack of resolution.
This has me thinking about compatibility. At one point in my dream, I felt connected to and compatible with the Heath Ledger character. But as he became more like my former boyfriend, I felt less compatible with him.
I have friends who at one time I would have thought myself to be very compatible. And it was a merciful act– some suspension of disbelief– that allowed me to realize my compatibility with my husband.
For a long time, I thought of compatibility as an equation involving obvious likes and dislikes: books, bands, movies, sports, occupations, etc. But now I see those things, as personal as they are, are also very external projections. For me at least, they are external projections of a self that perhaps helps me to balance all the internal elements: family dynamics, painful memories, pain. So it makes sense to me that the surface projections (that come from and salve the darker, inner places) are not the things that make me compatible with someone. Rather, compatibility is beyond those things. It supercedes these things….
