The Postcard and the Thing Itself (On Falling in Love with Ideas)

My meditation teacher said something that stopped me cold: “We fall in love with the idea of a person, and then we fight so hard to keep it alive.”

We were talking about marriage. Here's what I realized as those words settled: you could replace “person” with place. Or with job. And especially with yourself. The idea of what we are supposed to be versus the one actually breathing in this body right now.

This is how it works: you meet someone. What you're actually meeting is a composite image. Part projection, part desire, part whatever they're choosing to show you in those early, curated moments. You fall in love with this construction. Then time passes. Patterns emerge. Behaviors that don't fit the narrative. The person reveals themself as they actually are. Complex and contradictory. And instead of meeting them there, in reality, you fight. You fight so hard to keep that original idea alive.

The crash doesn't come when reality reveals itself but from fighting.

The Geography of Delusion

I'm from Italy. I know this dance because I've watched it happen from both sides. Americans—many people in the world, actually—fall in love with the postcard idea of Italy. Sundrenched piazzas. Kind people gesturing over impossible food. Conviviality. The light, God, the light. All that is real. It exists.

But try to have a long term relationship with Italy. You'll also meet the corruption, the profound dysfunction as a society, and the ingrained shortcomings of my people. Of myself, if I'm being honest.

The same thing happens in reverse. So many people fell in love with a projected idea of America—something they saw from afar. A beacon, a promise, salvation. Then you move there, and you learn what it is. The advantages and genuine beauties, but also the quirks, the grinding reality of it.

And then the fighting begins. The refusal to see. The desperate attempt to keep the postcard version of that person, that country, alive. Even as the actual thing is standing right in front of you, waiting to be met.

What We're Really Fighting For

This is the mechanism: falling in love with an idea is a means to be saved by something external. It's the belief that if only this thing is true—if only this person is who I need them to be, if only this place is what I imagine, if only I am the version of myself I've constructed—then I'll be safe.

But that safety can only come from within yourself.

And when you're fighting to keep fantasies alive, when you're at war with reality itself, that warfare lives in your body.

I've felt it in my bones and in my muscles for the past fifteen years. This constant flight or fight state. This chronic tension of someone who has never actually landed in the present moment because the present moment is always the wrong one.

The Paradox of Change

Our desire to shape reality comes from pain. It's understandable that we want to mold the world, our lovers, and ourselves into the shapes that will finally let us rest.

But the fighting itself is what prevents the rest.

In order for something to change, you can only first let it expand itself fully in the way it is. You cannot force transformation. Control brings only pain and suffering. What you can do, when there is genuine intention and you meet things as they are, is extend a hand in communion. See each other honestly. Offer to support their path.

But that's all you can do. Anything different is forceful control. It's not a soft way to live. It's actually incredibly hard, this constant warfare with reality. With yourself.

Meeting What Is

I fell in love again and again with the idea of who I am. And that is not who I am. What I am is capable of absolute opposites. Dark impulses and incredible compassion exist at once. Pain and hurt alongside joy and the capacity for kindness.

This isn't a contradiction to solve. It's the texture of being human. I must meet it and accept it, not idealize it.

I rarely met anything in front of me for what it is without judgment. Because if I actually saw them with clarity, I'd have to stop fighting. I'd have to acknowledge that my desires might not be met. That the idealized version doesn't exist. That safety isn't something you find by perfecting external conditions or becoming the right kind of person.

You have to find it inside, in the groundless ground of letting be as you are.

The Small Chance

Which ideas have you fallen in love with rather than the thing itself? Which people have you wanted to be what they're not? Which version of yourself have you been fighting to keep alive?

You can decide that you want to keep hurting yourself, to keep longing for things as they are not. To keep fighting that fight in your bones for another fifty years once you see this pattern clearly.

But there's a tiny chance, really hard—there's a possibility you can let go. You can actually see the person, the country, and yourself as you are. Stop fighting. Let things be as things are. Just look at each other with patience, understanding, joy, and compassion.

I can only pray for all this to become true for me. For this to become true for you. That we might meet there together, in the expression of what we actually are. Not the postcard. The actual place. Not the idea. The thing itself.

Breathing. Present. Finally safe, because finally here.