FUN FIRST!

WRITINGS

• The Duchess of Something or Other
• The Thoroughbred
• What He Meant: A Poem For Heather
• Fractured: A Poem for Annette
• My Love Clearly Exceeds
• Lost Cat
• Giraffe On Fire
• Cat's Valentine
• Tina

Giraffe On Fire [download]

Giraffe on Fire
(Loving Women Without Understanding Them)

A man was walking, despondent, through the cool morning sands of Newport Beach when he stubbed his toe. Bending down, he retrieved an ornate carved-glass bottle with a stopper. He examined the bottle and removed the stopper. A genie appeared. “I will grant you one wish.” “I thought I got three.” “Only in the movies buddy, this is real life. One wish.” “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii but I’m afraid to fly and I get sea sick. Build me a bridge so I can drive to Hawaii.” “A bridge! Do you have any idea how hard that is? It would be a couple thousand miles long. All those pilings, disturbing the ocean floor, all sorts of lights and horns and such so the ships don’t run into it. Standing up through high winds and seas. All the building materials. It would create such scarcity that prices everywhere would sky-rocket. It would ruin the world’s economy. A bridge! It’s just impossible!”

The man, dejectedly, thought some more. “Well, I was just walking along this beach thinking about what a mess I’ve made of my life with women. I’ve been married and divorced twice. I just had another horrible fight with my girlfriend. When I get back, she’ll probably be gone or all my stuff will be on the street or, maybe worse yet, nothing will have changed and we’ll just go on till the next horrible fight. I just don’t understand women and it’s made my life a continuous string of miseries. I want to understand women. Make me understand women.”

The genie paused, seeing the complete agony of heart written on the man’s face: the tears, the downcast eyes, the slight contortions wrought from the short, snorting breaths of despair. The genie was moved to the depths of his ethereal being by the man’s self-torture. He knew how this one change would transform the man’s life from no life to real life. He knew how this one change would bring the man true and lasting joy and allow him to experience the beauty of loving and being loved that had eluded him his entire life. The genie spoke. “You want that bridge two lanes or four lanes?”

The genie was both wrong and right. He was right that it is not given to men to understand women (and vice versa I might add) in the sense that a clockmaker understands what components assembled in what way make a clock keep the correct time. He was wrong because what the man was actually seeking was joy in his relationship with a woman and that was within his reach even without aid of a genie. Joy in the relationship comes from appreciating the woman for what she is.

This revelation hit me when I was looking at a picture of a Salvador Dali painting: Giraffe on Fire. I looked at it for some time and was thinking about how much I enjoyed it. Haunting colors and strange images. The most prominent character in the painting is a woman with drawers (like in a dresser) in her leg. A tiny (relative to the woman) giraffe is in the lower part of the painting. Its back is on fire. I was thinking: “I really like this painting but I do not understand it at all.” My next thought was “that’s true about women too.” Then, the lightbulb went on. There is a difference between understanding and appreciation, between “knowing about” and loving. If I applied my experience with appreciating art and music to my relationships with women, would I love and appreciate them more and derive more pleasure from the relationships?

The key that opened the door to my appreciating art was a quote I heard during a talk at a conference I was attending. The conference was not about the arts and I don’t recall the point the speaker was making but the quote hit me hard. The speaker quoted Flannery O’Connor responding to the question: “What is your story about?” She replied: “If I could tell you what my story was about, I wouldn’t have had to write it.” The story isn’t about something. The story is something. Every word chosen, every sentence crafted to present a complete work. When we’ve read it, we have a sense, a feeling, a reaction to the whole work. While we may appreciate a certain turn of phrase and choice of word, our enjoyment of the work comes from our taking in the whole. If we are aspiring writers, we may want to undertake a word by word examination to see if we can figure out how to create our own work. But, of course, none of us is going to create a woman.

While O’Connor spoke of a story, I most readily saw the truth of the statement in viewing a painting. The important thing for the observer is not to analyze the brush strokes, or the paint, or figure out how the artist made the colors or even to try to articulate the answer to the question “What is this painting about?” The important thing is to take in the whole work and enjoy what it does to and through your senses.

So, how does this apply to women? What can we do to better appreciate them and increase our enjoyment of our relationships with them?

Each woman is a unique masterpiece. This should be obvious but is often lost when trying to apply a “system” to relationships. All women are not the same. A Rembrandt is not a Picasso. You might have a preconceived notion of what “Art” is that limits your ability to appreciate different works because it doesn’t fit your mold. If you only approach art casually, you might think Rembrandt is “Art” and Picasso is not because Rembrandt’s people look like people. You can miss the beauty of Picasso because it wasn’t what you were looking for when you were looking for “Art.” You’re stuck. You don’t get beyond an initial attraction or lack of attraction.

We can see the foolishness of this in other aspects of our lives. Chances are it wasn’t “love at first taste” when the first cabernet or single malt scotch touched your lips. But, after awhile, you came to enjoy the taste. Enjoy the uniqueness of each woman.

How do you go about doing this? Stop, look, and listen (which by the way is the same advice for avoiding getting run over by a train at a railroad crossing. Coincidence?).

Stop

If you want to really appreciate anything, the first thing you need to do is stop and refocus your thoughts. In Chris Widener’s excellent book, The Angel Inside, his character, Tom, typifies the casual tourist’s approach to art. Tom is in Florence and an old man asks him if he’s taken in any of the artworks of interest. Tom replies: “I breezed through them. What would a trip to Florence be without seeing the art, right.” The old man then asks what Tom learned from seeing Michaelangelo’s statue of David. Tom responds: “Learn? I didn’t learn anything. I saw it. He was huge. Naked. It was great. I left.” The old man then takes Tom back to the statue of David and has him actually stop and look at it. When he does, he sees the beauty and the wonder that Michaelangelo created. He actually sees the great work. On his first trip, he saw a statue he’d been told was a great work but he never really stopped to see that it was true. He had no personal appreciation of its greatness.

To appreciate a woman you have to stop. Not just physically stop. You have to stop your chain of thought and your self-focus. You can’t appreciate her if all you are thinking about is you. We tend to breeze through our human encounters like Tom breezed through Florence’s great art. We’re on a mission (taking care of ourselves and whatever seemingly important thing we’re about at the moment) and miss the beauty that’s in front of us. We’re so busy with ourselves and our own agenda that we miss the thing that can bring us the greatest joy. It’s time to stop. Stop right now and decide that you are going to appreciate women from here on out. Your wife, your girlfriend, the woman you wish was your girlfriend, your friends, your co-workers, the women you meet in line at the bank, the women who work at the bank. Decide now to stop your pattern of thought. Decide now to stop your self focus.

“Wait a minute!,” you might be saying to yourself. “I like my self focus. I’m the one trying to be happy here. What does stopping my agenda have to do with me being happy. My agenda is exactly what I want.”

This brings us to one of life’s cruel truths: no one is nearly as interested in you being happy as you are. No woman is going to be primarily interested in you being happy. If you relate to a woman based on how interested she appears to be in you being happy, you are going to end up like the guy at the beginning of this article who found the genie in the bottle. In fact, if you have ever found a woman whose principal interest seems to be making you happy, you have probably found a succession of women like that and they have probably all gotten over it eventually. They were interested in making you happy because they thought this would lead to you making them happy. But, you didn’t.

True joy in your relationships with women is going to require you to enjoy them for themselves without looking for them to do something for you. Any other path ends in disappointment.

Bill Bonner, in his e-letter, The Daily Reckoning, had a great quote: “Only a happily married man can appreciate a beautiful woman properly.” While this is obviously an exaggeration, it expresses an important truth. What makes the happily married man different? He’s not consumed with how the woman is going to feel about and respond to him. He’s not worrying about whether she’s attracted to him, will reject his advances, will dump him for somebody else, etc. He’s not wondering whether his next step will lead him closer to the treasure or trigger a booby trap dropping him into a spike-filled pit. He’s free to enjoy her as the masterpiece she is. Since he’s not putting his fortune at stake to acquire her, he’s not wondering whether despite all appearances, she’s actually a forgery, or will get stolen after he gets her.

So, how does any of that help you if you’re not a happily married man? You can still think like one. You can approach your relationship with women in the same way. You can consciously decide that you are going to focus on the woman and not on what the woman does for you. You can decide to stop. Also, if you are married (and here’s the radical and convoluted part), you need to approach your wife the same way as the other beautiful women. Focus on her for herself.

It’s a sad fact that we often turn our primary relationship into a nonrelationship. We fall into a pattern of relating that is self absorbed and utilitarian. Our wives are like tools we use to do the things we want to do and we are annoyed when they aren’t where they’re supposed to be or don’t get the job done. A tool is just a means to an end. If you treat a woman like a tool, however, you are going to come to a very bad end. You’ll be standing there watching her leave you (maybe physically, certainly emotionally) and wondering what went wrong: “She was just not the woman I thought she was. How could I have made such a mistake? She never really loved me. She’s so selfish. I did everything for her. I was a fool.” What you really mean though is: “Why didn’t she want to make me happy? Why did she want what she wanted and not what I wanted? I did everything to allow her to live her life for me but she wanted to live her life for herself. I need to find a woman who only cares about me.” Don’t let yourself come to this point. A woman is a treasure not a tool. To find joy, you’ve got to stop.

Look

Now that you’ve decided to stop; stop your self focus and focus on a woman for herself, its time to look. That means pay attention.

When you look at a woman what do you see? What do you feel? How do you react to what you see and what you feel? Excitement? Fear? Wonder? Dread? Indifference? It probably depends on the woman and your existing relationship with her. If you start really paying attention, you’ll find that excitement and wonder will become more and more your emotional reaction.

Let’s return to the art analogy. Michaelangelo’s David is a beautiful creation. It exists for it’s own sake and is beautiful whether you look at it or not. The fact of its beauty is unchanged by your interaction or lack of interaction with it. If you look at it, pay attention to it, allow it to move you, you benefit from its beauty. If you don’t, it’s your loss. It remains a great masterpiece either way.

John Stutz is a photographer. He takes pictures of women who have sculpted themselves through diet and exercise and incredible hard work into perfect physical form. These women are beautiful. They would be beautiful whether John photographed them or not. What John does is pay attention to the unique beauty of each woman and capture it in a photograph. He looks with care and appreciation at them and takes their beauty and his talent and captures an image that reveals the truth of their beauty and his deep appreciation of it. We should all be like John. We should look on the women in our lives, the women we meet everyday, with care and appreciation so we see the truth of their unique beauty. Their beauty will be there whether we see it or not. If we miss it, it’s our loss.

Beauty is in the eyes of the beholded. (Make sure you read that right.). A decision to really pay attention to women is a decision to look into their eyes. This can be difficult. Maybe because you’re shy, or have been trained not to do it, or just because they have so many other nice parts to look at. Women make more eye contact than men as a general rule. So, even if you’re a bit uncomfortable with it, women won’t be. Eye contact creates a connection that is absent without it. It opens up an opportunity to see a women more as a whole; to take in the whole work. Try it out.

Women like to be noticed in a positive way. They want to be seen as pretty, intelligent, talented, compassionate, etc. A decision to pay attention means looking for these positive things. To really enjoy any relationship with any woman make looking for and finding these positive things your quest. Whether it’s the first time you’ve ever seen her or she’s your wife of 50 years, focusing on what’s good about her is the key to you being happy. Challenge yourself to start doing this and to keep improving.

Start by asking yourself what’s good about her appearance. Don’t be lazy. Don’t say “everything” or “nothing”. Be specific and be honest. Remember you are looking for what is truly good about her. Does her hair look nice? Does she have a great smile? Is she wearing something attractive or unique? Earrings? Necklace? The way she looks is not accidental. It’s the product of her decisions about how she wants to appear. Make a point of noticing the choices she’s made that are attractive to you. If you see something you think is unattractive, skip over it and move on to finding what’s good. If you get stuck on what you don’t like, you’re denying yourself the pleasure of enjoying beauty. Why cheat yourself? Make your first reaction any time you see a woman (whether it’s the first time ever or the first time since the last time) be finding something good about her appearance. You’ll quickly learn that this is a lot of fun.

Once you’ve made this a habit move on to observing other things that are good. What good characteristics beyond appearance does she possess? What things does she do well? What do you admire about her? Again, this requires making the effort to look for positive things. How does she relate to people? Can you see kindness, gentleness, compassion? Is she intelligent? Is she the person who can always find the answer? Doe she have everything under control so nobody has to worry about whether things are going to happen when they are supposed to and how they are supposed to? Does she sing well? Play a musical instrument well? Is she particularly good at a sport? A board game? Does she read a lot? Know a lot about current events? What does she love? What is she passionate about? Challenge yourself to look for these positive characteristics in women.

I can’t overemphasize that this is fun to do. Making the search for positive things in a woman’s appearance and character the foundation of your relationship with her will bring you a lot more pleasure than you can imagine. It gets your thoughts and your feelings moving in a positive direction and thinking and feeling positively leads to happiness. When you focus on the positive, the positive overwhelms the negative. The fundamental nature of the relationship becomes positive. Your fundamental approach to life becomes positive and this transforms everything so that you become happier in all aspects of your life. All this from the simple act of looking at women. Is that cool or what?

Listen

Women have a lot to say. A conversation between two women who are very close is an amazing thing to witness. I remember being with two sisters listening to them talk and marveling at what I heard. They knew each other so well that it was almost impossible for me to follow the conversation because they didn’t have to complete many sentences. A few words into it and the other sister knew exactly where it was going and started her response which itself only required a few words before the process repeated itself. I was in awe. Guys can’t operate at this level. We can’t even listen to it for too long before our brains start to explode. Don’t worry. You can enjoy conversing with women without suffering brain damage. The first step is to realize that what you say in the conversation is not important enough that you should be thinking about what you’re going to say rather than listening to what’s being said to you.

To guys a conversation is like baseball. The other guy throws you a pitch, you focus on it, and at the right time, swing and hit the ball. For women, a conversation is more like watching the changing shadows and revelations as the sun progresses across the Grand Canyon. You can stand in one spot at the Grand Canyon all day and see something different every few minutes because of the passage of the sun. The colors will change. Rock formations will come into view and then awhile later disappear. It’s a fascinating process. What’s enjoyable about it is the process. You are excited about what’s going to appear next. You wonder what previously hidden beauty is going to surprise you in the next moment. You don’t watch for two minutes and then say “Ah, yes, I see that the sun is going to end up over there in the west in a few hours. Now that I know that, I can move on.” If you fail to enjoy the process, you’ve cheated yourself.

You need to approach listening to women with this mindset. Everything they say is important to what they’re communicating. The conversation is important for its own sake. What seems like superfluous details to us, stuff that doesn’t seem to be necessary to making the point, is not superfluous at all. Women talk to create intimacy and connection. She’s an artist painting a picture. Rather than getting frustrated trying to figure out what it’s going to be a picture of, focus on enjoying watching her work and seeing the colors strike the canvas. If you pay attention as she creates the work (the conversation), and you have a genuine interest in her creative process, you will find you enjoy your time with her a lot more than if you are constantly wishing she’d get to the point. This isn’t easy but it is fun.

Listen actively. Be a living organism. Listen to the sound of her voice. Enjoy its softness. Enjoy its pace, its tone. Look at her face. What are her expressions? Look in her eyes. Look at her hands. What is she doing with them? Appreciate the richness of expression that is revealed in all of these things. Take it all in and enjoy the total experience. Don’t be thinking about what to say or how to be clever.

Listen for emotion, for feeling, as well as thoughts. Sharing feelings creates intimacy. Women have a strong desire to connect and connection occurs through expressing feelings and knowing the listener has received the feeling being transmitted as well as the facts related to it. Men are not generally very good at expressing or understanding feelings. Here’s the good news: you don’t have to understand what she feels or why she feels it, you just need to pay attention and acknowledge that she feels it. She doesn’t need you (or want you) to “fix” her feelings or explain to her how she got them or could avoid them in the future. Her feelings are an important part of who she is and expressing them is important to her being a healthy woman. She knows you’re a man. She’s not expecting you to grasp it like a woman would. She wants to express this important part of herself, know that you appreciate hearing how she feels, and that you care about it because you care about her.

Ok, I know I said this section was Listen, but I do need to cover very briefly Speak. Because feelings are so important to women, to really enjoy your time with one, you need to let her know how you feel about something. Again, they know you’re a man, they aren’t expecting much. But if you can express how you feel about something, it will let her know you trust her and aren’t pushing her away. So, when you say you are going to the baseball game, you might say “I love baseball. I used to play catch with my dad and he’d come watch me play when I was a kid. We’d talk about our favorite players and how our team could improve or the mistakes they made in the game the previous evening. It was great having baseball to share with my dad. Even if we didn’t have anything else to say to each other, we always had baseball. I love baseball.” You get the idea. Since you are a man, you probably don’t immediately associate your love of baseball (or fishing or whatever) with your relationship with your dad (or your brother, or your best friend when you were six). But, you know, it’s probably in there somewhere. If you practice, it’ll become easier to share something that expresses emotion. Women will be amazed.

Stop. Look. Listen. These are the keys to enjoying your relationships with women. Women are the greatest masterpiece of creation. The most beautiful sunset, majestic mountain range, or placid lake are stick drawings compared to women. Take the time to follow these easy suggestions and you’ll quickly experience the joy that can only be found in loving women.