Friday, November 15, 2013

Love reign o’er us


I know people of all ages who swear love cannot be found for them.

“I won’t ever find the right person”, “I always land in the friend zone”, “love is the bane of my existence”, “I don’t think I can ever believe in love again, look at my luck”, “I lost the love of my life”, and one I’ve actually heard a lot recently, “I’m too old to fall in love again”.

I won’t suggest a Hollywood ending or some heavenly intervention will solve all the problem. I will however say that love is there, it could be some other place, it could be near you or it could be waiting for you to allow yourself to love.

Why do I write this? Because I’ve read some romance novels lately and I worry some people think that love for them is only a book topic, a central theme or a genre even. It’s not, it’s alive and most times people just need to read the right words, listen to the right advice or finally believe in themselves to let go of age-old mores they insist are universal, eternal and unyielding.

One challenge is that just as love is romanticized, so is the lack of love - the pain, the poetry of sadness. Think about it, some artists are most inspired when they are at their saddest and most miserable. I can relate, writing about experiences that are very close to heart and pouring my pain onto a page in the hopes of diluting it just enough to cope, and for the most part it’s helped me endlessly. So when I hear the phrases I mentioned above, I respond with something on the lines of "have patience, eventually, EVERYTHING makes sense, although it takes hindsight... love is no different."

Love knows no logic, follows no set path and is rarely rational. Think about it, there’s at least one person for which you went a little crazy for and not the good crazy, but the bad crazy. Heck, I know some people who became completely infatuated with someone. That’s because it is a volatile emotion that requires balance and a canvas to express or else it may turn sour.

So to the phrases above, I have a few answers:

“I won’t ever find the right person”. I think you will except you won’t know it as obviously as movies paint it out to be. It’ll be someone you’ve yet to meet or someone you’ve known for years and suddenly one day something will click. I also highly recommend dispensing with the checklists of what the perfect person or the right fit requires. Love respects no requirements and does not work based on filling out a preset of qualifications. It happens and people who don’t find the right person often are searching for a specific person and shut themselves to the possibilities of just flowing into love.

“I always land in the friend zone.” So? I landed in the friend zone with my wife, we never seriously looked at each other as prospects and then one day something changed, and we've been together ever since. Some of the best contacts in life happen by allowing friendships to blossom and evolve and love is there... it’s tacit, it’s quietly waiting for the right conditions to blossom and it won’t care what history you have, it’ll just happen.

“Love is the bane of my existence”. The truth is I know some fantastic people who are single and have been single for a while and I’ll be honest, I don’t get it. From both sexes, great, smart, considerate, beautiful people that have landed in the mindset that love is a bane - an antagonist they need to dominate and conquer. I think this has to do with that poetic approach to love many people take and the reality is that love is not a bane, it is not an enemy to be thwarted, it is a subjective emotion impossible to accurately capture with words for however we try... it is also something that is repelled easily by negative vibrations. Think of it this way, if you approach an encounter thinking that it won’t work and have no hope in the sheer possibility of love, what do you expect to be the results. When you want to force love to happen and arrive, most times it’s not love, it’s a poor substitute that eventually devolves into its base ingredients. Don’t hate love and it just might love you back.

“I don’t think I can ever believe in love again, look at my luck”. Love and luck don’t always go hand in hand. Sometimes they avoid each other altogether. That still doesn’t mean hope should be lost. If there’s a quality that is purely human, it’s the full formed essence that let’s us picture a fulfilled future... it is hope. And with hope, real hope, love will arrive.

“I lost the love of my life”. There’s a dangerous term writers and especially romance writers do tend to use, which is soul mates. It is the belief that there is one particular specific single person meant for you... and if that person is gone, you’re up a creek without a paddle. I have been fortunate enough to have people share beautiful life stories with me and in my line of work I’ve been able to come in contact with various people... including people who have been able to find more than one love of their life. No one plans on losing a loved one, not to cancer, not to divorce, not to the hands of another person... still it happens. And my reply to that situation is this, just because one well has dried up, been poisoned or become someone else’s property doesn’t mean that there isn’t another well that can quench your thirst.

Lastly, “I’m too old to fall in love again”. This one is peculiar because I’ve heard it way too many times recently and I have two stories to share in regards to that. Firstly, I know of a couple who met at a Medicare Advantage social club. A man 67 met a woman 63, both had widowed and they looked to each other for companionship because they each had lost someone. From their pain and their loss, love was born, from the ashes of marriages that had been decades long, new life and new love arose. In another example, Robert and Ann Hunter met after she widowed and he divorced. He was the owner of a boutique winery in Napa Valley. They got married in their sixties and were together until this past October when he passed away at age 91. Both these cases found love when they thought there was none to be found. They let love into their lives, they didn’t judge, they didn’t question, they didn’t let what they’d seen, heard, or read deter them... they just flowed with their love.

This post is because I believe in the power of words and the power a real connection can have in our lives. So by all means, share these words with anyone that thinks there’s no hope in love and that there’s no love for them to be found. Who knows, they may finally find something within some words that invites them to truly let go and flow. 

Peace, love and maki rolls.

JD

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