Let's say you have a high-definition television. The picture you see is vibrant, crystal-clear and almost alive.
Then, one day, it breaks down. So you pull out your old, regular-definition set. And suddenly the view is less colorful, dull and flat.
It has lost its life, its reality, its fullness.
It's far less than what you once knew.
That is the reality of life after love.
One day, with the one you love, your eyes have been opened to an entirely new world and a suddenly fresh and vibrant new life. It as if you and your heart have been awakened from a decades-long sleep in which there were dreams kind of like this, and yet nothing close to this amazing.
Everything is more real. Even the mere act of taking a breath and blinking take on new meaning in this revised and overhauled reality. Every heartbeat is a drumbeat to a new way of living, changing your walk through this existence from a slogging march to a break-dancing, free-form expression of pure joy. Your feet barely touch the ground, if, indeed, they can find terra firma at all.
And then, without warning or hint, you are unceremonially thrust back into the world you thought you'd left behind for life. It's as if you were blind for decades, been allowed to suddenly see and experience real sight, and then gone blind again. You almost wish you'd never been allowed to see at all, because then you would never know what you had been missing. Or what you now will miss for the remainder of your life. Because you never will see like that, march like that, live like that ever again.
Not unless the one you love will return.
And that seems very unlikely, if not entirely impossible.
It's as if the bank has repossessed your Hi-Def TV and handed you a 10-inch black-and-white with rabbit ears and told you that's all you get to watch from now on. It would remarkable if you'd never seen any TV before, but how can you go back now that you seen what can be?
How can anything ahead in life ever compare to the love you know and have known?
Indeed, how?
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Friday, December 28, 2012
WHAT IS LIFE WITHOUT LOVE?
What is the point of life, if not love?
We spend our formative years (hopefully) being taught how it feels to be loved unconditionally. In the process, we (hopefully) also learn that being loved feels very good, because we will want to know that feeling even more once we grow up.
Along the way (hopefully) we are watching and learning from parents, grandparents, siblings and others how to love. We see the sacrifices made willingly. We see the small loving gestures, the tender touches, the loving looks, the caresses, the closeness, the sharing of all things -- good and bad, pretty and ugly -- so that we can do this one day for someone we love.
Then, when the time comes and both heart and mind, soul and body, are ready, we begin to search the world for the one we are meant, created and built to love. There will be false starts, blind alleys and dead ends along the way and the path may twist and turn, rise and fall and test our resolve, determination and endurance, but to not continue, to not push on is to consider a lifetime without love.
And that would be a hollow, lifeless experience. Far too sad to even consider.
So we keep searching in the faces, the eyes, the hearts of all we meet. Is it her? Can he be the one? Always pushing past each disappointment and picking up the search where we left it. Because our hearts demand that we keep looking until, at last, it finds the heart that completes us.
Not once in this journey do we ever consider that maybe we will find this one, this better half, this soulmate and they will, for reasons we cannot comprehend, choose a life without love. For it is one thing to think we may never find our "one." It is quite another to think that person will reject us completely.
And then it happens. We are stunned, shaken and lost. Because the cause seemed so right, so noble, so perfect. There's no longer a need to search, for we have found. But what we have found, in turn, chose something and someone else. And we are left alone, with a heart leaden with love, heavy to carry, bruised and broken, but with no place to run, nowhere to turn.
For without love, what is the reason for life?
We spend our formative years (hopefully) being taught how it feels to be loved unconditionally. In the process, we (hopefully) also learn that being loved feels very good, because we will want to know that feeling even more once we grow up.
Along the way (hopefully) we are watching and learning from parents, grandparents, siblings and others how to love. We see the sacrifices made willingly. We see the small loving gestures, the tender touches, the loving looks, the caresses, the closeness, the sharing of all things -- good and bad, pretty and ugly -- so that we can do this one day for someone we love.
Then, when the time comes and both heart and mind, soul and body, are ready, we begin to search the world for the one we are meant, created and built to love. There will be false starts, blind alleys and dead ends along the way and the path may twist and turn, rise and fall and test our resolve, determination and endurance, but to not continue, to not push on is to consider a lifetime without love.
And that would be a hollow, lifeless experience. Far too sad to even consider.
So we keep searching in the faces, the eyes, the hearts of all we meet. Is it her? Can he be the one? Always pushing past each disappointment and picking up the search where we left it. Because our hearts demand that we keep looking until, at last, it finds the heart that completes us.
Not once in this journey do we ever consider that maybe we will find this one, this better half, this soulmate and they will, for reasons we cannot comprehend, choose a life without love. For it is one thing to think we may never find our "one." It is quite another to think that person will reject us completely.
And then it happens. We are stunned, shaken and lost. Because the cause seemed so right, so noble, so perfect. There's no longer a need to search, for we have found. But what we have found, in turn, chose something and someone else. And we are left alone, with a heart leaden with love, heavy to carry, bruised and broken, but with no place to run, nowhere to turn.
For without love, what is the reason for life?
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
WATCHING A MISTAKE
Short of losing them entirely, one of the hardest things is to watch someone you love make a mistake.
Not an "oops, I put too much peanut butter in my cookie recipe" kind of mistake, but the kind of error that ultimately may change them entirely.
It is hard to watch them walk away from love, give up on their talent, their gift or quit on themselves. You can't stop them because they have the God-given right to make their own choices and decisions. But it still hurts to watch them make that choice and know, in your heart and soul, that it is so horribly wrong for them.
Especially when, it can appear, they are, in essence, rejecting you and everything you once shared.
How can you just stand by and see someone you love decide they'd rather live with abuse, disrespect, dominance and parental-style control than with you? How can you accept that this person, whom you love without condition, would rather be with someone who treats them as less than an equal, less than a partner and more like a child, a worker, a slave, a piece of property? What can you do when you see them turn away from their God-given talent, a tremendous and powerful gift, a gift they once called "their reason for existing," just so they can be that much farther away from you? How can anyone watch the one they love give up on themselves and on love? How can you accept that they would rather feel nothing at all than continue to live a full array of emotions with you? What are you to think when you realize they would rather go the rest of their life totally numb than to spend another second experiencing a fuller life with you?
How do you deal with the stark reality that they'd rather feel nothing than to be with you?
But this is their choice and you have to make it. All you can do is hope that sometime, in some future, they will come to their senses and realize they've made a horrible mistake. And then you have to hope they can swallow their pride just enough to admit to themselves that they've made the mistake and take steps to at least take back their talent and themselves, even if they never can find it within themselves to come back to you.
But maybe, given enough time, they might realize that was a mistake too, and turn back to you anyway.
All you can do is watch, wait, hope and pray. Because the choice, ultimately, is theirs to make.
Not an "oops, I put too much peanut butter in my cookie recipe" kind of mistake, but the kind of error that ultimately may change them entirely.
It is hard to watch them walk away from love, give up on their talent, their gift or quit on themselves. You can't stop them because they have the God-given right to make their own choices and decisions. But it still hurts to watch them make that choice and know, in your heart and soul, that it is so horribly wrong for them.
Especially when, it can appear, they are, in essence, rejecting you and everything you once shared.
How can you just stand by and see someone you love decide they'd rather live with abuse, disrespect, dominance and parental-style control than with you? How can you accept that this person, whom you love without condition, would rather be with someone who treats them as less than an equal, less than a partner and more like a child, a worker, a slave, a piece of property? What can you do when you see them turn away from their God-given talent, a tremendous and powerful gift, a gift they once called "their reason for existing," just so they can be that much farther away from you? How can anyone watch the one they love give up on themselves and on love? How can you accept that they would rather feel nothing at all than continue to live a full array of emotions with you? What are you to think when you realize they would rather go the rest of their life totally numb than to spend another second experiencing a fuller life with you?
How do you deal with the stark reality that they'd rather feel nothing than to be with you?
But this is their choice and you have to make it. All you can do is hope that sometime, in some future, they will come to their senses and realize they've made a horrible mistake. And then you have to hope they can swallow their pride just enough to admit to themselves that they've made the mistake and take steps to at least take back their talent and themselves, even if they never can find it within themselves to come back to you.
But maybe, given enough time, they might realize that was a mistake too, and turn back to you anyway.
All you can do is watch, wait, hope and pray. Because the choice, ultimately, is theirs to make.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
LOVE REVIVED
What happens to love rejected or ignored? Does it die? Does it disappear? Does it go into hibernation, awaiting the return of the sunny smile of a lover?
Love, I believe, is like matter and energy -- it cannot be destroyed or lost; it is perpetual. It may change its form, or its location, or its level of passion or depth, but it is forever. But it can be given to another and never returned. They keep it and can either give it to another, or return it in kind to the one who first gave it.
Sometimes, it stays with us because another does not want it. It then can change from the passionate, flowing love to a colder, frozen, listless love that lingers but does not leave, that hibernates within the heart, awaiting the warmth of another to thaw it and bring it back to life.
Of course, not just any person can revive love. Only the right person, the right heart, the right matching love can bring the love in a heart back to life, can warm it back into a passionate state. Others may try, like all of those princes who tried to revive Sleeping Beauty, but only the right heart, the right kiss, the right love can reawaken the love laying idle in a heart.
Whether or not that love comes along and is willing to smile warmly on the heart laying idle and cold is outside the control of the one awaiting love's return. He or she can only wait in hope and faith, for that time to come. And believe the right love once again will come along to revive the love in the cold, idle heart.
Love, I believe, is like matter and energy -- it cannot be destroyed or lost; it is perpetual. It may change its form, or its location, or its level of passion or depth, but it is forever. But it can be given to another and never returned. They keep it and can either give it to another, or return it in kind to the one who first gave it.
Sometimes, it stays with us because another does not want it. It then can change from the passionate, flowing love to a colder, frozen, listless love that lingers but does not leave, that hibernates within the heart, awaiting the warmth of another to thaw it and bring it back to life.
Of course, not just any person can revive love. Only the right person, the right heart, the right matching love can bring the love in a heart back to life, can warm it back into a passionate state. Others may try, like all of those princes who tried to revive Sleeping Beauty, but only the right heart, the right kiss, the right love can reawaken the love laying idle in a heart.
Whether or not that love comes along and is willing to smile warmly on the heart laying idle and cold is outside the control of the one awaiting love's return. He or she can only wait in hope and faith, for that time to come. And believe the right love once again will come along to revive the love in the cold, idle heart.
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