Randomblings: on love

Well, the time has come to clarify. I recently posted some words attempting to reflect some of-the-moment feelings about men. It definitely came across as man-hating and woman-worshipping, some wordy stuff that I don’t even believe in myself. At the time I had been hurt, so I lashed out. I think we’re all entitled. And you are also entitled to think and say and comment whatever you want.

Here’s something else: I love men. I absolutely love men. The idea of men, manly things, muscles, voices, smells, mannerisms, etc. I love my grandpa, I love my dad, I love my guy friends, I even appreciate ex-boyfriends. I truly believe woman is not complete without the man as the man is incomplete without the woman.

But let me just say here that both are genuinely priceless individually. And I believe that always, no matter my mood.

Then we all know that each gender has its quirks. Then each person has a personality and character. All these things are, in my opinion, pieces of the mosaic that make up this tectonic world. The world is beautiful and active and progressive because of individuals and their tendencies and their choices. We all need each other, we each have our needs, we express our feelings, we long to share those feelings with others sometimes.

There’s plenty I could say about women. The day after I wrote that Randomblings about men not deserving women, I made a whole list of why women are trouble and how they need men just as much, if not more, as men need women.

I won’t give examples, because those too will come off as generalized and not applicable to everyone underneath a blanket statement.

Here’s what I think. Humans have desires to trust and to love. Those develop through relationships, which develop through experiences, which traverse countless paths of connecting lives.

A lot of learning can happen with every experience. Sometimes we learn the biggest lessons from our hardest choices, our deepest pits, our indescribable feelings, our thickest fears. Sometimes it’s from the tiniest glance or the lightest touch or the faintest sound that we feel or learn the most.

It’s personal. Until it’s personal, it’s someone else’s. We want personal. We want to learn, we long to experience, we desire, we crave, we plunge into experience.

Sometimes we desire that personal part of ourselves to include another. Like the gears of a clock, any move we make, they move too. And, on for a while, one experience moves two people, two people move one life. The tick and tock of two hearts, defying time and reason: love is an ultimate experience.

Love is a timeless experience.

That is why, when it’s gone, sometimes it feels like you’ve never moved, even if you’ve crossed the whole world a thousand times, even if you’ve left it entirely and come back.

That is why, when you’re in it, you can’t wait.

That is why, when you’re living in it, you can experience, grow old, and die and it still holds you as though you were just born.

The time it takes to learn what love is, is the time experience travels from the head to the heart. No one can tell you what you’re feeling, you will learn that as time goes on. Like me, you’ll make plenty of mistakes and maybe regret a few choices. But that’s the way I needed to learn, and I am glad it took some time to learn the right way for me to learn love. And I suspect I’ll have yet more to learn. All the time.

There is no rewinding love, there is no return to love. At every moment, love is present or absent. The more often it is present, the more one can build on love, making relationships, understanding, forgiving, loving anew.

I say anew, because, well…For example, I loved a boy and I really liked the way I loved him. But that ended, or at least, it was suspended for quite some time. I realize, now that the love for him is gone, absent, that if I were to love him again, it would have to be a new love. That’s what I mean when I say there is no return to love. (Not that if you feel without love that it's beyond relocating, no, not ever.) Love fits in hearts, not in time. People fit into both…

Am I wrong? Maybe I’m wrong again. I do not mean to say that love is lost at every new moment. No, love builds, love wanes, love is very active. It’s just that it is not bound by time in any way. It is as gravity, a law immovable, but with a flexible understanding. Airplanes thrust into the air and gravity is not changed. There are ways into love, out of love, around love…but love will always be.

That is how it is timeless, that is how I believe it waits. It waits for us to gain experience and to learn what it feels like within us. Then it can propel us in any direction, out of any depth, through any fear, into another’s arms.

In case anyone reads this, know that I believe in love. I believe it takes work and that that labor refines the worker. The final product of a life well experienced with love is that heart of gold we all seek. In ourselves and in any other.

Life is about timing. Love is the experience of a lifetime.