It’s not the easiest thing in the world, to love.
I mean: it’s easy, but so many things can get in the way, distracting us from love, from letting ourselves fall into the flow of loving, of giving everything we are to the act of caring for another person, for the knowledge of them, for the knowledge of what impact they have upon us, for the responsibility of our impact upon them. So many things can hold us back: pains from past experiences, confusion over lost loves, rules and cautions given by well-meaning others.
For years, I’ve fought those rules, those cautions, those fears; for years, I’ve sought to find the truth of my impact, to see who people truly are, to understand why they behave in all the ways they do.
And I’ve loved.
It’s actually the easiest thing in the world, to love. To give of oneself; to listen beyond oneself, to watch silently as someone moves in their native – or adopted – ways. To take in someone else’s essence as quietly and non-judgmentally as when looking at the ocean water push again and again in rippling seafoam upon the shore… to marvel at the patterns and at the way those patterns make us feel, rippling even into our own hearts and minds.
To know that one may not be able to affect those waters, aside from having them slide around us as we wade into them, to allow ourselves to be embraced, surrounded, loved back in the ways natural to them while we stand, basking in the warm sensations of saltwater washing on our skin, kissing our cheeks in sudden splashes, filling our sinuses with cleansing seaspray.
It is enough, sometimes, to bask, to take in the beauty of a thing again and again. That, too, is love.
And, yes, there is more, should we wish to go there: there is protection of those things and people we love, ensuring that no harm comes to them, that we may indulge again and again in its beauty, that others too may share in the beauties we value.
But, imagine the fear and terror of something so benign as the sea, should we have waded in too far when we did not know how to swim, if we were pulled under by a current to strong to resist. Imagine the fear we might concoct of even wading in shallow waters, if our fears grew great enough.
And imagine the beauties we would miss, if we let those fears take hold and rule us, instead of facing our fears and the reasons for them, if we did not learn correctly from our life’s lessons: if we understood incorrectly that the waters were life-taking instead of life-giving, if we concocted tales of monsters pulling us under the seas instead of currents from which we could actually, in growing stronger, swim.
Imagine if we decided not to love, simply because we were afraid, because we had been pulled under and choked on a love stronger than we knew how to handle. Imagine if we tried to empty ourselves of all the waters within us, simply because they resembled those waters of the sea.
It would be a crime against ourselves, and such a great error in our understanding – and yet, this is the conclusion too many draw from the pains of love, of loving: To withdraw. To stop. To die. To fear.
There are some waters in which one cannot sink, in which the salt content is so high that it is impossible, even when one cannot swim, to fall beneath the water’s surface. There are some waters so clear that one can see straight to the bottom of the sea bed. Would we want to miss these beauties, just because we had some painful, incomprehensible experience at some time?
I would not; I do not.
Love is only another mark of life, of living; and, to love, we must know what love is, how it works, from whence it comes.
But no one has taught us love.
I would say: As with anything worth knowing, as with any skill worth learning, keep trying. Keep living. Keep learning. Keep loving.
To me, love is the final magic, the infinite unknown into which so few deeply delve, from which there are inevitably the greatest rewards.
I love loving; and I will always love you.
Oceans of Mine 