On Being In Love And Doing Nothing About It
For a while now, this subject has inspired me to write. I don’t know exactly what I mean by Love (or what ‘doing nothing’ means either) but it speaks of subtlety, of patience, of sincerity perhaps, and restraint.
I hugely enjoy that experience of ‘being in the midst’ of something special, and yet not giving oneself wholly to it.
An image comes to mind: I’m at an ‘all you can eat’ buffet - the most lavish one imaginable - and yet I just pick at the fruit, enjoying a few grapes, a couple of dates, a slice of apple.
I see the expensive, French-style desserts, warm pastries, exotic plates of spicy food; but I just take the bare minimum.
The other diners don’t get it. I also don’t really understand it. But it touches my soul somehow.
Food is just one of my loves, however. And it is relationships mostly that belong to this reflection. The love of a lover, of a friend, a partner, a Mother, a Father.
How does one ‘do nothing’ about such Love? And how does one be ‘in love’ and yet remain a simple observer of such?
Well, it’s been said that ‘time heals all’, that it’s ‘the best medicine’ and that, as wonderfully expressed in the book ‘Anti-Fragile: Things That Gain From Disorder’, it’s also an ever-expanding series of disorders!
The universe we live in is expanding at an ever-increasing rate; one of those dimensions is Time (apparently) - stretching exponentially both forwards and backwards
Any idea, any habit, any truth, any object gets destroyed over time. It could be an hour, a day, a month or 10 years from now, but that person you love, that role you identify with, that career, car, house, mobile phone, garden, houseplant, sofa, will decay.
Your ideals, ethics and beliefs will get questioned and, I dare say, at times even torn apart…
That’s the way it should be. It’s the way of Nature, after all, to move towards greater infinite complexity, and to banish itself entirely before starting out all over again.
Life has taught me to pay attention to this process, to delay my emotional responses to certain things and observe my own (quickly) changing words, thoughts and ideas. When I am truly in Love I am in Love with the moment, and afterwards I am perhaps in Love with the story or ‘lasting narrative’ of that moment.
And the more moments that arise, the more false and unhelpful that story soon becomes.
THIS is the kind of Love, perhaps, that we should do nothing about: the story; the fragrant, nostalgic or romantic past; the dreamy, wishful future.
Instead, I learn to make friends with the ordinary hour, and to make love with each and every passing minute….
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