I was under the mistaken impression that our blog entries would be lighthearted taunting of Twilight fans, or things like "Why I still buy every album that John Cougar Mellencamp releases." Love? Ephemeral and capricious, eternal-yet-temporal love? That's more revealing than I want to be. I am tempted to craft my response solely from song lyrics. Consider Blues Traveler:
Time is fleeting -- time's a wasting
and time is bleeding, forever racing.
And time is money and money is time,
but love does none of these,
Love does none of these.
Or, for the more cynical among us, maybe some early 90s U2:
Love is clockworks
And cold steel,
Fingers . . . too numb to feel.
Squeeze the handle,
Blow out the candle,
Love is blindness.
There's a great line in Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five that says something to the effect of how Billy Pilgrim's mother, like so many Americans, tries to craft life's meaning out of things she has purchased in gift shops. I have the tendency to do the same thing with song lyrics, I think, but I'm meandering.
I'm meandering because the question is hard. I remember in high school my best friend Dustin talking about his first employer, Dr. Jones of Jones Hospital Pharmacy, talking about the statistics of true love at a surprise anniversary party. He said (and I'm paraphrasing twenty-five year old hearsay here, so be kind) that out of every ten people you meet, you could fall in love with maybe three or four of them, but of that three or four there was one that you were truly compatible with -- your soul mate. Aww. I remember Dustin marveling at how logical, orderly, and neatly put the whole story sounded. I also remember wanting to punch Dr. Jones in the throat.
Love doesn't run on statistics, and it doesn't lend itself to pat answers or descriptions. Love is part epiphany, part commitment, part weary and dogged determinism, and part absolute freaking magic. It's . . . well, it's too big to explain. To my chagrin, there's a part of it that can absolutely be contained within couples' therapy and marriage seminar workbooks; to my delight, there's a terrifying chaos to it that can level cities. You don't waste time trying to explain it, or even HOLD it, because here it is, poof it's gone; it's as solid as steel, and it's evaporated. I will say I don't think it's ever truly gone, even in relationships where we believe it to have gone forever (or would like to believe it is gone forever.) I also believe with all my heart and life experience that it grows based upon your willingness to work around what you know of it. Jami and I have had days . . . let me back up, YEARS . . . where things seemed dark and dreary, only to come out of the dense fog into . . . hmm . . . maybe not paradise, per se, but a very nice ranch house in Grayson.
Love is too much for us. I think, like so many things, we think we understand it and we view it with less reverence and amazement than it requires. We too often confuse it for its initial phase of infatuation, and we are too quick to discount passion in the face of long-term familiarity. It is scary-awesome, and I lack the metaphors.
Man -- I've got to come up with another topic, too? This may require Reese's to bolster my constitution.
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