This is what virtually everyone I have ever known has said about love at one time or another in their lives. Well, maybe not those exact words, but you know. Because really, let's face it, love is a !#&*!f#$!*r.
I know, I know, I have written over and over about the wonder and beauty of love. About how all we need is love, because love is all there is. I have echoed Bryan Ferry and agreed that there is nothing / more than this.
And I meant all of those things. Really.
It's just that there is this other side of love. And it's kind of dark. Sometimes it's black as the coal you wish your ex-lover had gotten from Santa.
Sometimes it can feel so dark it seems there's no way any light will ever escape from it again. But then, some poor fool lights a candle of hope somewhere down the corridor and you decide you'd better get up and go check it out.
Too many metaphors?
The point is, here's this thing that totally baffles us, shatters us, leaves us inoperable, unsure, raw. And yet we can't help but bend to its call, its command, its seduction.
So, back to the question of wtaf? I don’t mean to mislead you here. I don’t actually have an answer to the question. And besides, what is there to say about love that hasn’t already been inked.
But then again, if love is all there is, all there is actually is quite a lot. So there has to be more to say.
Quoting an ancient poet, Shawn Colvin sang us a cautionary tale of the 84,000 different delusions. I used to think this was a reference to the number of seconds there are in a day. Until I learned that there are 86,400 seconds in a day. For the sake of poetry, let’s say there's 84,000. Anyway, something like 83,000 of the delusions must have to do with love. (The others are probably things like time, impermanence, and those wavy lines that look like water on the horizon when it’s really hot.) Because love is not something we define. Love is something that defines us.
And for most of us, that is terrifying.
Because we want to be mysterious. Mysterious is interesting. Mysterious is seductive. Mysterious keeps us safe.
Mysterious does not allow us to wander the dark alleys of love, nor trespass on the grounds of lust, nor attempt to swim in the murky waters of infatuation. Wait, that is exactly what mysterious entices us to do. It can do all this because uncertainty is exhilarating.
Who wants to be safe, when we can be alive?
Even if we are absolutely tortured by love, it has a way of placing us right in the center of our humanness. And that is where we get to find out who we are.
Back on the subject of things left to say about love, I can say this: At this time in our evolution as a species, it seems critically important to choose love. Not that it is possible to choose anything but love, really, if you accept the premise that love is all there is. Damn, I did it again. I opened Pandora’s box and another paradox slipped out into the universe.
The truth is the simple (or not-so-simple) act of choosing love is an infinitely powerful one. If you don’t believe me, just think about any time in your life when you’ve done it. Chosen love, that is. Intoxicating, right? Worth all the trouble. And I’m not just talking about romance. Any act of love, no matter how small, fills us with the elixir of life.
Maybe I was hiding an answer to the question after all. If there is one, it is this: We keep choosing love because love is the best game in town. When we choose love, we choose life. And life, with all its doubt, frustration, heartbreak, beauty, ecstasy, and sun-drenched joy is worth all the risk. It’s a simple as that.
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This is the 35th essay in a collection of 66 that make up the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand.
The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0