Hey, my name is Eric, and I would like to share a love story with you guys.
When I first fell in love, her name was Emma. She was the most beautiful girl I ever knew. The minute I saw her, I knew we were meant to be.
She had wavy, sandy blond hair, and green eyes with the longest lashes, and she had the most beautiful smile I'd ever seen.
Emma and I spent 3 years dating, 3 blissful young years, and I thought I couldn't want more.
But then I did realise I wanted more, and it seemed she did too.
We got married, and we had 2 boys. I loved them so much, they were so talented and beautiful, and Emma was a part of them.
Life was complete. Everything was perfect, and as it should be.
One thing I loved so much, was making love to her. I've never been very verbose, and never was good at expressing myself, so that was the one time I could show her how much she meant to me. It was true love, completely refined, and pure love.
I'm not exactly asexual...At all, so for an extremely sexual person such as myself, that was the most I could give her– my body.
But then things started downhill. It was not the same. It was painful every day, and I really don't want to get into details, because it hurts me so much, just to think of it. So I will move on to the end.
Emma left me.
She left me because she told me she was asexual, and had been for a very long time. She didn't want to admit it at first, because she liked me as a person, and didn't want to disappoint me. She dated me because her parents thought she was a lesbian, and she wanted that to stop.
She opened up to me. And my blissful marriage had not been the same for her.
I found out she hated making love to me. She didn't want our kids, but liked them after they came. Still...
Everything I had believed mutual, was one sided. My deepest expression of caring for her was deemed "disgusting" by her. She didn't say those exact words, but she made it evident.
One thing, was Emma was such an intelligent woman. She was great when it came to people– a real people person. She could make you believe anything.
Emma left me, because she was tired of living a lie. She didn't want our life, because it wasn't the life she wanted. She waited until I had become so in love with her, I felt I would simply cease to exist without my wife– my one true love.
And she got full custody of Peter and Sam.
___
Clearly, I did not cease to exist without my wife.
Yet… I still feel I would cease to exist without my true love.
I realise now– that true love was not Emma. No mere woman– nor any human– can bring one love so powerful it can be a reason for existence. No human can bring "true love".
In suffering, people come to their senses. I know I did.
Stripped of any superficial happiness– I was left desperate. Funny I would call my wife and children superficial, but it comes down to that.
I love Emerson's Self Reliance. So eloquently put, so emotionally engendering. Comforting and convincing.
And yet, the comforts I feel from it are, in fact, superficial. They leave me dissatisfied and compromising. I cannot just trust myself.
I was given a conscience. I was given a will. And I was given a mind. But they were not enough. They stumble along the lit path– often deviating from it.
My being told me Emma was all to me; I would never be content without her; I needed no sources outside myself; it told me the tragedy I experienced was unfair; I was a good man. Never immoral.
And yet many a night I got drunk during my days spent alone.
After hard, rational struggles, I came to realise my self was often– and had been– wrong.
Did my self not prove unreliable?
The emotions I experience from Self Reliance leave me saddened– Emerson was a wise man, with the wrong information.
You can be a genius, and miss some points. Or even think backwards.
If only Emerson had known a version entitled God Reliance.
When you remove obstructions from your mind– such as tendencies towards a desire for absolute self reliance– you can come to realise that we need more.
To open, humbled eyes, the order of the universe parades a creator. Furthermore, the modest mind is able to see that humans cannot survive alone.
And, this conscience, this self-drive, that Emerson believed as the end all, is in fact a pointer to something enormous.
Our God.
