Where love leads

The thing about love, being in love, that struck me most profoundly reflecting on these past few years of my life is how differently we can each understand something like love. To define love, label it, describe it's characteristics and then believe that is all there is to it oversimplifies something that can be understood so differently from person to person.

I guess I must confess my understanding at least in part of "I love you" is to express the intent to another that "I want to practice being in love with you." Beyond the obvious enjoyments a relationship brings.  But more than this you get the opportunity to be very close with another human entity. Love is impetuous and catalytic. It brings members of a species together, but the side effects from ecstasy to heartache are not just coincidental. They occur in all relationships to some degree. So love really is a kind of package deal. Weddings typically make this rather clear. The commitment lies in the bond that began with attraction- physical, psycho-intellectual, and otherwise. And in not wanting to let this level of companionship out of one's immediate experience. Finding common goals, desires, and walks in life. And this is well and good. Coupling allows us to develop essential relational values such as sacrifice,  forgiveness, empathy and authenticity with someone it would be easier to do this with than say, a stranger or acquaintance.

None of this is to draw conclusions about the reasons people fall in, out or stay in love with one another. My aim is to examine the journey. We fall in and out of love our whole lives and many have surely asked what is the aim of it all? Why this process of bonding and breaking? Attachment and release? For myself, and most recently love has been about this reconciliation between how I have understood love from my experiences and grounding in this area and how others come to understand what love is. My last relationship was very loving and we were close. He was my best friend for over two years really. Issues become clearer after a relationship of course and forgiving myself was the first thing I had to work through. The dishonesty and extent to which I discovered he was unfaithful is what gored me the deepest. Continuing to forgive is a process. We are never truly "over" anything. We carry everything with us and as we grow through life it is turned over into fertile sod for future nourishment or we leave it to rot and fester, bitter and repugnant. I believe it is a Buddhist saying: "Bitterness and Wisdom cannot occupy the same vessel." This I found to be true.

In this relationship in particular, it came down to how we each understood the conditions of love and loving another person,"I didn't do it to hurt you." This inability to empathize was the pain in my heart and my head at the time. We understood love differently. That and when only one is ready to tackle and address such issues consciously, the other person is bound to be left behind in this regard. I only mention it because it allowed me a valuable understanding. To share that yoke with someone is a commitment they have to be at a point of maturity to embrace and I have grown in this awareness for now. One of the most meaningful Buddhist passages that made its way into my reading at the time is a meditation on The Elephant. 

Take pleasure in being careful. Guard your mind well. Extricate yourself from the mire, like a great tusker sunk in the mud.

If you find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go along with him, overcoming all  dangers, pleased at heart and mindful.

But if you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest.

All of this eventually led me to a place of contentment in solitude. Gratitude for the platonic loves in my life and a sense of purpose beyond merely seeking to "fall" in love. It is a desire to practice and promote the health of love. Love is a reliable catalyst for getting closer to yourself as well as another and the divinity within. The challenges and joys of loving bring us deeper into a fullness that unites all life. This is why we love. In this I am empathetic to the views of William Blake. He understood this intimate, sexual communion exists for divine reasons. It is a kind of sense we have no organ to which to assign it. Experiencing the current of love and the intensity of sexual intimacy allows one to tap into their greater selves. It is those 'others', present and past in each of our lives that allow for this to happen. And for those gone by, I am still grateful for the lessons and the companionship for a time. You have aided my growth and my appreciation for the movements of love.

Understanding love is not my goal I suppose. It is to allow it to be. A force that it seems to be. To shape me when I am caught up in her gale. Or leave me be when I am allowed to settle and recuperate from the rush. The eventual question many times asked: if I would like to get married some day. I do not know how to answer this question. Much like if I want a family. To answer these questions in the only honest way I can, I might love both and spend more time on their imagining but not without the right framework for that vision to occur. For otherwise it is mere fantasy and not possibility, potential. The love has to come first in my mind and the ability to sustain the actions love requires. The commitment to continue evolving as an individual is essential. You, of course, have your own standards and requirements for caring and being cared for and must ascertain what these are and set this expectation before choosing to love someone. Knowing ones expectations and desires for life lays the groundwork for a partner, a marriage, a family. These are so vitally important and recognized as such that they are the focus of premarital counseling.

Suppose I do not allow myself to envision much more than each day as it comes? I could, in practice be alone the rest of this life and find contentment in that because I have loved and been loved. Felt, if not always commonly understood. I have had an informal education with such things and if the course of life carries onto other lessons, so it goes. I hope for it, of course. But taking life and love as they come is all we do.

There is often irony in Eastern folklore and myth that I appreciate. Traits such as wisdom are also paired with foolishness in a character to highlight the contrast as well as the thin line between wisdom and foolishness at times. Blake famously wrote, "If the fool were to persist in his folly he would become wise." It is the irony in many of these lessons that when we are searching for something we are not receptive to what is reaching for us. To be still, receptive and contemplate what actions we should take can be quite difficult. We exist in a culture that has so many means and methods of seeking and creating connections between people who seek the perks of this experience of love and connection. It is at our fingertips and although it seems to make the worlds of friendship and dating much more convenient, presents it's own set of problems. A world of old connections that in lifetimes past would have fallen by the wayside remain part of our lives via a yes or no on a friend request years ago. Thoughts for another time.

All I know is to follow my bliss and travel when I can with the people that I encounter and engage as we all walk a path. I seek a path that wanders but does not stray. One that seeks patiently without expectations. A path that more resembles a pilgrimage than a destination really. All things of which to be mindful. I suppose I have learned to gravitate towards those people I can grow with. Our world is missing a depth and vitality that starts first with each fragment of humanity. I enjoy those who have some ideas about living this out in some original sense of their own imagining or exude this in some way just by being alive.

Love is easily idealized and in a number of ways. But rather than idealize our present understanding of it perhaps it is better to consider what it's fullest potential might be. Love considered outside of the box offers hope of an ever-evolving humanity. Not in a full-blown hippie way, but in a species altering way. If homo sapiens sapiens (sapiens?) were to survive into another aeon, they must go the other way from savagery and ignorance. A profound literary example of this is in Dorothy Bryant's The Kin of Ata Are Waiting For You. Members of an allegoric far-removed tribe of humanity do not partner-marry and have a very simple, seemingly primitive but evolved culture. They are an aware and post-primitive people that have achieved freedom from or never been  burdened with the stigma and religiosity that has contaminated contemporary views of sex, gender roles and human bonding. The people of Ata do not marry except in rare occasions and most are very old when they do. These sapiens go through a lifetime of experiencing love and attachment among others of their kind, and only rarely a few might decide they are fortunate to find one other kindred spirit they choose. Bryant's imagining both geriatrically romantic and quite possibly very enlightened.

And I wonder
While we count the cost
Which is sweeter
Love or it's loss

~Tom McRae