I saw “A Star is Born” Saturday night October 6, 2018.
It is a beautiful movie about two people who really love each other.
I cried while I watched the tenderness each of them displayed.
I cried while I watched how considerate they were.
Their lives were not easy.
Life is not easy.
They had each other and that made all the difference – that was worth more than anything else.
Intelligence is the ability to solve problems. Consciousness is the ability to feel things such as pain, joy, love and anger.
I know a young woman whose parents insist that she get married and have babies. They keep pressuring her to get married.
Rich successful intelligent young men pursue her, propose marriage.
One young man told her he wanted to marry her because he wanted to have children and a family.
She refused to marry him because she has feelings.
She wants to marry a man who wants to marry her because he loves her, he cherishes her, he wants to take care of her, he is unselfish, he is loyal, he is compassionate, he is generous and she cherishes him and wants to take care of him too.
Her parents are outraged. They want her to get married and have babies.
I am on her side.
She has judged each of her suitors on the basis of potential of life long social bonding.
I agree with her.
I think she should marry a man who loves her and cherishes her, and should not marry a man who only wants her for her baby creating potential.
Similarly, I think she should not marry a man who only wants her because she is beautiful, fun, intelligent eye candy and comes from a “good family.”
I believe she should stay away from pursuers/suitors who think it is of utmost importance that she comes from a family that has high social status and who think that it is of utmost importance that she has high social status.
Feelings of attraction arise when biochemical algorithms calculate that a nearby individual offers a high probability of successful mating, social bonding, or some other coveted goal.
Unfortunately most people don’t know themselves very well or don’t know the person they are about to marry very well, use faulty culturally inculcated decision making formulas when making decisions, most people have muddled imprecise goal definitions and are often under tremendous pressure resulting from the situations they find themselves in while they are making a decision.
Life is full of chaos.
It is not easy to find relevant and trustworthy information.
Question: Who has time to always find relevant trustworthy information? Answer: No-one.
We will all make mistakes from having insufficient data.
I am on the side of the young woman who is “going with her feelings” about her suitors.
I am in agreement and on the side of the young woman who is making her decision about a marriage partner based on her desire to marry a man who she believes/feels she will cherish for her entire life and who she believes/feels will cherish her for his entire life.
Go see “A Star Is Born.”
“A Star Is Born” is a wonderful movie.
Watching the tender love the man and the woman in that movie had for each other made me cry.
Watching “A Star Is Born” will force you to pay attention to your own sensations; watching “A Star Is Born” will give you an idea of what our full human potential is.
Gary Smolker
Copyright © 2018 by Gary Smolker
All Rights Reserved
November 26, 2016
This morning I read a beautiful note (email) my friend Jason Fane sent to my youngest daughter Leah Smolker last night.
Jason gave Leah recommendations on what to see in Italy.
See copy of Jason’s email below.
Leah,
Jason and Leah are both beautiful people.
They are both lovely people.
They are always their real selves.
Beautiful is not how you look on the outside.
Beautiful is what you are made of.
Beautiful people spend their time discovering what beauty is.
They the share the beauty they have discovered with other people.
A Beautiful Person is a person who soaks up the beauty of the world, makes that beauty his or hers and then shares that beauty with other people.
That is what Jason and Leah do.
Jason and Leah fill themselves up with beauty; they take it in; they make it theirs; then, they share it with other people.
They glow.
When you are with them they make you feel warm and safe and curious.
Travel is good. Fashion is good. Food is good. Ideas are good. I share what I know about those topic with other people.
I blog about those topics.
We are all pursuing happiness above all else.
But we are not going to find lasting happiness in travel, fashion, food or ideas.
We are going to find lasting happiness in love and intimacy more than anything else.
The trick to being happy is being the “real you”; being the real you on both the receiving and giving ends in a relationship with someone else.
Look at the happy and joyful the correspondence between Jason and Leah.
Jason and Leah are being 100% real with each other.
They are bonding with each other.
By the way, I know they never stop bonding with each other.
Compare the happiness they are sharing with each other by sharing the beauty of the world with each other and their true feelings with each other with the miserable lives you know many people are living.
Some married people are living miserably.
At a recent dinner party a married woman told me she is a nun: “None in the morning, none in the afternoon, none at night.”
At the same dinner, a “single wealthy older man” told me he believes women will do anything [including having sex with him] for financial security, or even for a “free meal.”
Many men and women have told me that is their view of reality, of the way of the real world.
They have reached a point in their lives where it is their reality to see sex as a transaction.
Some married men, some married women, some single men and some single women think of sex in terms of satisfying a physical need without any emotional content.
Those people are not beautiful.
They are incapable of having a tender loving emotional relationship with one another.
In “Love Warrior” Glennon Doyle Melton reports:
One hot morning in the summer after tenth grade, my best friend and I go to the local pet store to visit the animals. My friend is considering having sex with her boyfriend and she asks me to tell her what it’s like. I watch the kittens play in their cage and notice one pouncing on a nearby scratching pad. I point to that kitten and say, ‘Sex is like that. I’m the scratching past and Joe pounces on me when he gets the urge. My body’s a toy he likes to play with, but he’s not all that interested in me. It’s like, he’s touching me – but he’s not really touching me. Sex isn’t really personal. It’s just that I happen to be his girlfriend so my body is his to play with. It feels childish to me. Like cats pouncing on scratching posts. But I learned this trick: I just leave my body there to get over with and I slip out and think about other things. I plan outfits and stuff. Sex is something I have, really, it just happens to my body while I’m up here, waiting for it to be over. But, I don’t think Joe knows. Or cares.’
Believe it or not, many women experience sex they way Glennon describes sex in the above paragraph.
Furthermore, I have heard of married women who have not had sex with their husbands for ten years or more.
People are made for intimacy.
They find someone they are drawn to, someone they want to have a relationship with.
Their relationships will not work when if they are unable to bring their whole real self to each other.
Look at how Jason and Leah bring their whole real selves to each other in their email exchange about Italy.
You can only be in love with someone else when you are fully present.
Another person can only be in love with you when you and the other person are both fully present.
Love is a sacred place created when two people decide it’s safe to be their real selves, a place to be fully human and fully known.
Building trust and intimacy takes time.
Intimacy and trust between two people is a mountain.
You can’t start by leaping to the top.
If you do, you miss the climb; the climb is where you bond.
You’ve got to climb together one step at a time.
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Below are some of the pictures posted on Leah’s blog post referred to above titled “Italy Armchair Travel” ….
Gozo in Malta
Rome is one of the most famous cities in the world:
Milan’s cathedral is one of the most famous in the world:
Syracuse, Noto and Ragusa are all charming Baroque cities in Sicily:
Panarea in Sicily is a small island near Stromboli that offers excellent views of the volcano:
The Four Seasons Hotel in Florence
Aman Hotel in Venice
Cava Grande, Sicily
If you want to have long lasting happiness, pair up with someone
You will know when you have found a person like that because people like that glow, they radiate beauty, they emote beauty, they share beauty.
When you are around Jason or Leah when they are talking about the beautiful things they have seen in the world or talking about the beautiful things they have seen done, or thought about, you feel warm and safe and literally purr in contentment.
Gary S. Smolker, publisher, movie reviewer, social commentator Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog www.garysmolker.wordpress.com Gary Smolker, fashion blogger Dude's Guide to Women's Shoes www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com
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Gary S. Smolker 