Be myself Conversing with: my destiny When I have fallen in love, it has generally been wholehearted, and without much chance that my feelings would be returned. Yet I have been true to myself and thereby, I think, grown in integrity and learned what it is that I find lovely in another person.691 C3-0

Dievo prašiau šauniausios, gražiausios moters, kaip žmonos.

Pondering my own legends Conversing with: freedom As a child, certain mental events became reference points. The most significant was engaging God to let me think freely that I might pursue my quest to know everything. Another was in third grade, the day we came back to school from summer. A girl, Rachael Baca, was running around the field in new boots. She was kicking me, as if it was a way to show that she liked me. I wasn't interested. I told God, so this is what girls are all about? I don't want to be any part of this. God said, really? I said, yes, it's not sensible. But then, I thought, I was too harsh, too hurried. Maybe some day I will want to fall in love and have a family? So I told God, not for the next ten years, until I'm seventeen. But I wasn't sure if God heard that, if he and I hadn't already sealed my fate. As it turned out, for at least ten years, and more than that, I was completely incapable of talking to girls, but would regularly fall in love. I thought I was cursed. Perhaps in seventh grade, I told God that there was one reward I would ask for figuring everything out, and that was to have a sweetheart, the most wonderful, beautiful, good and true woman in the world. He asked, do you want her to be your companion in your work? And I said, no, I can do that myself. I just wanted to enjoy her. Truly, when I finished my quest to know everything, at the age of 44, I found her right away! It was if I could look at life and people differently. I am blessed. It was a long wait, but I'm glad.784 0-1

Doubt myself Conversing with: self-understanding Sometime I learn by being open to doubt and responding to it. In eighth grade or so, at Lithuanian Saturday school, the priest who taught us religion asked me and others if we might become priests. I didn't feel such a desire, but I asked myself, why shouldn't I become a priest? This had me think through my reasons: I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and I didn't want to hand over my freedom; I didn't want to do what priests mainly do, which is to distribute the sacraments; I didn't think that Jesus would be a priest, but rather an ordinary person so as to make clear where true authority resides; I wanted to be open to having a sweetheart, marrying her and raising a family. As a grad student, I wondered, how do I know that I'm not gay? Especially if I find some men handsome? I took up this question and explained to myself that I myself had no interest in being gay, and no interest in dwelling on men, handsome or otherwise.718 0-1

Exercise a secondary principle Conversing with: respect My Mother taught me that when I go to a dance, I must invite all of the girls to dance and not just the ones I thought were pretty. And although this was not most important to me, but even so, many times when I did not know whom to ask, I remembered her words and obeyed them. She made me care more about other people.757 C3-0

What does my unconscious allow? As a student, I used to think that I might fall in love with any woman who I found irresistibly beautiful and good. But then I realized that my unconscious thought otherwise. My unconscious resisted me having any real feeling for a woman who was not Lithuanian, or at least, didn't speak Lithuanian. I thought that if a woman truly loved me, then she could readily learn Lithuanian and live with me in Lithuania. Maybe that's true. But my unconscious mind thought otherwise. So I took to heart my unconscious.1592 O-1

Supratau, kad bučiuotis be meilės yra tuščia.

Muddle through Conversing with: future In 1992, I was elated that the woman from Lithuania who I loved with all my heart had agreed to visit me in California. She stayed for three months, which is long enough that I couldn't quite remember not being with her. When she left, I felt devastated. Within a few months she married a man who she loved, but who hadn't been in love with her. I couldn't help but think about her every fifteen minutes. I knew that it would be a long time before I felt better. I made a plan to combat my depression with regular activities to pull me through. Throughout Lent, I made sure to go to church an extra day each week, on Wednesdays, to be closer to God. I read the Bible every night, hopping around from book to book, reading it all of it for the first time. I read a Chinese classic, "The Three Kingdoms", to entertain myself. And I did sports every day, mostly jogging. The year coincided with my writing my Ph.D. thesis, which was good, because that was a bit of drudgery, too. Three months had gone by when I realized that I was still thinking about her every fifteen minutes, but that my thoughts had changed. I was no longer thinking about our time together, but rather of the feelings that I had thinking about her. And so I realized that my emotional window encompassed the last three months, and although my feelings seemed just as strong, but they were feelings about reflections. And so each three months my reflections were once removed, like copies of copies.728 C2-1

Not to destroy what I treasured In 1992, I was very sad because the woman I had loved with all my heart had returned home to Lithuania and married a man she loved. I had so many feelings for her. Indeed, I stayed in love with her for about seventeen years. Early on, I thought, maybe I should kill my feelings for her. But I refused. They were my honest feelings that I felt for her. I wasn't going to dampen them. I wasn't going to look for her faults. I wasn't going to diminish myself, who I was and who I could be. I stayed true to them.1231 A-1

Take care of myself Conversing with: my welfare In 1992, I was deeply distraught when the woman I loved with all my heart returned to Lithuania and married the man she loved, who hadn't loved her. I made a plan to combat my loss with regular activities to pull me through. Throughout Lent, I made sure to go to church an extra day each week, on Wednesdays, to be closer to God. I read the Bible every night, hopping around from book to book, reading it all of it for the first time. I read a Chinese classic, "The Three Kingdoms", to entertain myself. And I did sports every day, mostly jogging. The year coincided with my writing my Ph.D. thesis, which was good, because that was a bit of drudgery, too. 729 C2-1

Įsimylėsiu nebent dar šaunesnę, kurią dar labiau mylėsiu.

Visualizing my feelings In 1992, I was devastated because the woman I loved with all my heart, but hadn't been in love with me, returned to her home in Lithuania and married a man she loved, but who hadn't been in love with her. Sometimes I would visualize how I felt. I felt that I was in a deep abyss, so far down that I couldn't even see or imagine the light above, and the abyss went down, down, down. But over the months, as I chugged along, I started to feel the light; I started to imagine the edge of the cliff; I was still down below, but I knew there was a pasture above that edge; that was about six months later. And then one day I felt that I was over the edge. 1230 CB-0

What would make my life easier? In China, one night in bed, I was thinking to myself, how hard it is for me to be Lithuanian. I didn't have anybody to speak to in Lithuanian, I didn't have time to read in Lithuanian, I was learning Chinese and so my Lithuanian was atrophying. I was raised to be Lithuanian, yet it would take an hour a day to truly be so. So I thought that my life would be easier if I lived in Lithuania. A second reason was that it would make it more likely that I could fall in love with a Lithuanian woman, as may unconscious was not allowing me otherwise, for I had grown up in a Lithuanian family and was committed to being Lithuanian. 1590 C2-0

What would make things more likely? In China, one night in bed, I was thinking to myself ... that if I lived in Lithuania, it would make it more likely that I could fall in love with a Lithuanian woman, as my unconscious was not allowing me otherwise, for I had grown up in a Lithuanian family and was committed to being Lithuanian. 1591 C2-0

Come to see or learn Conversing with: my understanding I was in love with a wonderful woman, but she married another man. I didn't stay in touch with her, but I did stay in love with her for almost twenty years. Once she wrote me with condolences on the death of my niece. I wrote her back that she was the dearest person in my life, and for her husband's sake, I didn't think it good that I be in touch with her, but I truly wished that she apply her creative talents somehow, as she was a beautiful soul, and Lithuania needed that very much. A year or so passed and my love finally faded, in part because I thought she wasn't living her talents, and in part because she was working as a cog in the European Union, apparently, not for the short term. Then I fell in love with another woman. It happened, finally, that I had reason to call her, and she was delighted. She told me all of her troubles. Then I raised my concerns that she was not applying herself and that she had sold out. She took it very badly and berated me. I saw how sensitive she was to herself, and not to me, and I wondered, why did I find her attractive all of those years? I realized that the world had changed. During the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, when people did what they could to avoid an inner life, she stood out to me as a person with an amazingly rich one, in which I believed. But now I thought it apparent that it revolved around her own feelings.727 C3-0

Pasidaviau, tegul Dievas man suranda.

Accepting God's assertion I am in love with a woman who God told me I will marry. I don't pray that she marry me because God assures me that she will. I prayed with her that her aunt get well from cancer and God consistently assured me that she would. I asked if I should keep praying, if I should offer myself to him in some way, but he said no. She died, though. Yet they reported that just before she died she bore witness that God truly is, that he had greeted her, and she said that she loved them all very much, and she passed away. I didn't know what to make of this, and when I ask God, he doesn't say.1233 B1-0

Tune myself to my sweetheart Conversing with: mood My sweetheart is a great influence on me. I have every desire to be one with her. So I open myself to her values that I perceive. She loves to worship God and she is a patriot of Lithuania. I can be skeptical of all of that, but not when I think of her, and I am glad that it is what I truly wish to be a part of, too. She is beautiful and she makes me feel chaste, too, for I devote myself to her.711 B4-1