Love

Love is so magical. It manages to intertwine such pure joy with such a deep melancholy quite seamlessly and all the while it emanates a strong sense of sacredness. The versatility of love is astounding, it can generate any mix of emotions. The deepest hatred arises from the death of a loved one. The harshest anger can come from the same, as well as a rejection from a loved one. The most concentrated happiness from those rare perfect days spent with loved ones. The keenest sense of helplessness and apathy when we feel unable to help those we love. The deepest depression when we fail to feel loved. And the most overpowering fear when the possibility of losing a loved one arises.

Many people may consider love to simply be an emotion among many, but I think it is more than that. I think it is the root of everything, a force of nature that is all-powerful. It reminds me of gravity, something you can fight against for a time, but it will always win in the end. The prime effect of it is to bring things closer together, as if they longed for a sweet embrace.

Just as the foundation of physics is gravity, I think that human society is based on love. We humans are glued together with a collective longing to be together, to do good to each other and to be taken care of. We are united in our search for happiness and we seem to only find it with each other. I can think of no better word to describe that than love. The root of what makes us human is love, and those without it begin to become inhuman (I would note that in Harry Potter, Voldemort did not know love. Of course, I would venture to guess that this is because no one risked truly loving him).

I read someone say that love is like slavery. When in love you do whatever you can for your loved one. But it is a joyful slavery, one that is completely voluntary. If fear, greed, and selfishness prevent one from completely embracing love (something I have been deeply affected by, as well as seen and experienced), then we may start to long to be free of it. And that is as deep a loss as anything I have experienced, from both sides of the equation.

For most of my 4 year relationship with Ingrid, I was able to fully embrace love. I would not trade that experience for anything. My whole life bent around her, probably a third of my thinking time was devoted to her, and I would spend hours fantasizing ways to simplely make her smile. I molded my behavior to bring myself emotionally close to her as well as to bring her joy. I studied her ways because I wanted to fully understand her. I ran a 4 year experiment on our relationship revolving around practicing "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," which was probably the most informative experience of my life and a major reason I was able to dive into the relationship so whole-heartedly.

Fully embracing love was overpowering in the most wonderful way imaginable. I can see how embracing love caused an emotional spring in my heart that has never left me. Atleast once a month I am moved to tears. I let myself be moved, scared and riled up by movies. And I no longer hold the reighs on my emotions so tightly for fear of a lack of control. It has been both liberating and deeply meaningful. I find a mysterious pleasure in the melancholy feelings of loss I have been experiencing these past 6 months (since we broke up). It might be because I feel so in touch with humanity and what it means to be human when I feel that way. It could also be because I know that I can replicate it with my next companion.

Of course, toward the end of my relationship I realized that Ingrid was unwilling or as of yet unable to fully embrace love the way I had. So I tried to get distance from love. I am generally able to exert control over my emotions, thoughts and feeling; with stubborn, lengthy effort I can usually manage to change them. But try as I might, my feelings of love would always rear their heads in my mind. I know objectively that this is a good thing; if there is one thing I am unable to change about myself, I guess it is good that it is the perserverence of my feelings of love. And while it might seen easier to try to suppress or excavate them, I have not found that to be the case.

I targeted a great deal of anger and angst toward Ingrid in an attempt to disentigrate my emotional bond to her. It kind of worked for awhile, but I almost feel like I was trying to cut a jet of water with a sword. Of course I can cut through it in a moment, but the force of the water will always keep the jet whole. I know I am unable to turn the jet off, nor do I want to turn my love off... it seems that the only choice I have left is to try to redirect it instead of cut it. It has been an interesting experiment on love, one I hope not to repeat, because it has not been particularly fruitful. It caused me more pain than anything and did not have the effects I wanted it to.

I hope everyone manages to fully embrace love in their lives and relationships, it is the best possible outcome even if you eventually get burned. Not embracing it is a painful, guilt-ridden path to lonliness, something I hope Ingrid realizes one day (and everyone else for that matter). Without love, we are not complete, our human-ness makes us yearn for it. For it is the root of our lives, the foundation of human society, and the glue that keeps us together.