Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it.
- Rumi
There’s nothing quite like falling in love. It’s not something to be analysed, rather it calls for the penning of a sonnet or gazing at the stars. It’s about heart over head - something I still have immense trouble with. Huge hits of oxytocin were fine post-partum (it’s the hormone that makes mummies fall in love with their babies, so that we don’t want to eat them), but now I’m at a loss at how to incorporate this emotion into my life.
Pain, suffering, disappointment, anger, fear, frustration, embarrassment, boredom, exhaustion, even loneliness...these I recognise, these I know how to categorise, even to compartmentalise. Love: what, pray tell, is this?
Love between a parent and a child is (mostly) unconditional, the rules of engagement (mostly) clear. Families are built around this.
The love between a man and a woman is different. The potential for greatness is beyond imaginable, but so is the capacity for pain. How does one weigh up all the options and balance it all?
On doesn’t.
Love isn’t some sort of business transaction.
Yes, once upon a time, the purpose of marriage was the merging and protection of assets. Maybe, for some people, it still is.
For me, I choose to fall in love - truly, madly, deeply. I wish to experience all of it, every moment.
Am I grasping? I don’t think so. I am merely being present.
Yes, I am not a hopelessly in love teenager. Yes, I am not my emotions. Yes, “this too shall pass”.
So this is why, I’m going to savour every minute.
Relationships, like everything else, evolve: the first five dates, the first five months, the first five years.
So since I’m so happy with where I am, I’m going to resist the urge to go with my head and really experience these beautiful moments that I have.
--
