Do You Believe In What You Can't See?

When you teach, there comes a point where you want students to understand not just what it is that they know, but how it is that they know it. We want learners to move from "knowing" something because they are told it is so, or because they read about it in a book somewhere, to having some more active and personally authentic knowledge of the reality. Ideally, active, questing, engaged learners will question and explore and hypothesize and test the reality of what they know until they assure themselves of the reality of their understandings.



In just about two weeks, we will notice the passage of the date when we first did the cutting five years ago. The marks themselves have faded some but their significance has deepened as the time has gone by. However we viewed what it was that we were doing that night, it was surely the "formal" beginning of our relationship to one another as Master and slave. To take the mark of another person permanently into your flesh is to accept their hold on you in a very stark and immediate fashion. I am sure I did not entirely understand that consciously that night. I do now.



I look back at the time that has passed, and I am stunned. I am stunned at how quickly it has flown by. I am stunned at all that has happened. I am stunned at the differences (big and small) between what I thought I knew about what I was choosing then, and what I have come to understand about it as it has been lived.



So much that seemed critically important and essential to the doing of this in the beginning, seems less so now. Other things that I never considered in the beginning have come to be a part of the ongoing reality. Change is a fact of being alive, obviously.



I look around, read from place to place, talk with people with whom I have "connections" of one kind or another, and I can sense the changes that have happened inside myself. I shrug a lot these days. I find myself thinking -- "oh yeah, I felt like that once too." Sometimes, that makes me feel old and jaded. Other times it simply makes me feel settled, and not all frantic to run and try or prove or do everything there is out there. I am not as anxious as I once was.



I understand that there are those who would look at how my life is and not be able to SEE the power exchange. Our protocols are not very formal and there is very little about our household that gives away the dynamic to the casual observer. What we do in our regular routines is so ingrained that it is barely perceptible as to who actually "controls" it or drives it. Those who get a chance to talk with the three of us are almost always bemused by the easy, light banter that goes on between us. We laugh and tease and chatter away -- and Master is quite often, and (usually) quite happily the target of shared merriment between T and I (scandalous!) -- entirely lacking in decorum! Oh, there'd be no question if one were privy to a session, but those are rarer than they once were. There are reasons for that as well; and He does decide.



It often can't be seen. Some would insist that what can't be seen does not exist. Of course, there were those who, in their day, questioned the reality of such things as oxygen, and electricity, and gravity.



In the beginning, I "knew" about D/s and M/s mostly by what I read and what I could learn from "talking" with others. Five years ago, I knew what little I'd been told and what I'd managed to read about on my own, but my experience was limited. I had facts but no personal truth. These years have given me time to test and try and live inside my own head and heart and body. What I know about M/s today is my authentic truth. I have lived this relationship around the clock and around the calendar now for more than a few turns. There is much more to learn and I sincerely hope I have the time to learn it, but I know the way it will come to me now.



swan