Tuesday, January 4, 2011

It's Totally Unreason... ing

A few blogs back I promised a musing on love. I've dropped a few liners, but done nothing serious with the topic.
But it occurs to me that there is one thing I can say about love. It arrives and stays without reason. This is important. There is no one reason for why I love Jenny, or Gillian, or Roland, or Adam, Micah, Georgia, Theo, Jeff, Kathy, Joy, and so on. One can include animals: Cleo, the stuuningly alive Spike, who died more than a year ago. The view from the top of Mount Messenger, the sound of a right-hand surfbreak at Whangamata, the taste of a fresh Thai carrot salad, the feel of the air after a thunderstorm, a distinctive blues song that comes to the ear across a busy street. The moment I start interrogating myself as to why I love any of them, things start diminishing. There can be no single reason, because there are thousands of reasons. And each of those reasons has to do with who I am and what I have become with them in my life. To love Jenny, Gillian, and all the others is, in no small measure, to love myself.
The examination, in other words, is something that makes me smaller. Not the subjects and objects of my care and concern. Me. It has taken me a long time to understand that the best thing to do with love is to simply accept it.
Love can have no conditions placed on it. Love is free, and independent. Love is not a part of me: I am a part of it. Love is an elemental impulse, one that tickles the hindpart of my brain, one that has nothing to do with higher reasoning. It is.
There's a famous line in the Bible: I am who am. It's a supremely arrogant line when put into the context of a god, but it has a refreshing humbleness when stacked up against that most unreasoning of human afflictions, Love. Love is what Love is. Grammatically ugly, I know - but resolutely forceful.
Reading: "Impact", Douglas Preston. Trashy potboiler, but fun. Much like a Tom Cruise movie.
Listening to: Neil Worboys and the Real Time Liners. The kind of blues music you hear across a wind and rain-swept street that makes you yearn for smoke-filled bars, a bowl of red-hot chilli, a bottle of teeth-achingly cold beer, and the close companionship of a better than good friend.

2 comments:

  1. Yes, and it isn't always a good thing either - one can love people and things that are really very, very, bad for one.

    Well written and insightful - as always. Now for a teeth-achingly cold beer with my best friend, the dog (he's having water)

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  2. Allan, that's made my eyes water with pleasure. There is such comfort in love, being loved, and loving back.
    I love you and Jenny too. Got your email, and I will certainly come and see you soon. You still haven't met Chris! I'm sure you'll love him too. We'll have Thai carrot salad. And you can drink Whisky (see, I'm learning - no "e" in Whisky).

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