Today I was slow and I thought about love. Such a cliché as it is, I came up with two things: 1) Love is everywhere 2) Love is there for a reason. What makes it problematic, of course, is how to handle it. Usually there is either too much love or too little and if the amount is right, something is still missing. We want to know why, when, where, how?
Why me, when you are so...? Why you, when you are not my ideal type? Sometimes love doesn't follow plans. Falling for a person twice your age is not nescessarily what your parents, or even you, wished for. Imagine being somebody's stepmom or -dad, when the children could be your friends. Not exactly a dream-come-true. Not to mention loving several people. Giving all of you for one person is already quite demanding let alone sharing everything with two or three.
When will I find the one, I have tried so hard and I am still single? Where is my love, I have traveled the whole world and I still haven't found what I am looking for? Sometimes the person of your dreams was always there but you never looked close enough. Other times you tried so hard to make someone be with you that you forgot who you are and what you want. It is not easy to realize that you spent years to make something work because the idea was perfect.
How will I make you love me? How do I make myself love you? How do I make myself stop loving you? Nobody wants to love someone who is already loved by someone else – especially if that someone might love you despite the other. Being second is not being the first and most of us are not able to share. It is not any easier to realize that your 'one' dreams about someone else or just stops loving you. How to let go when you still feel so strong? How to love someone after being hurt? How to be sure?
Love makes us puzzeled, addicted, possessive, jealous, hopeless – and sometimes happy. It is something we want so desperately that we start to behave like junkies if we don't get our fix.
However what I realized this weekend, when I experienced both the beginning of a new life and the end of another, is that love should not be like a drug. We should not try to figure out the formula so that we can get high all the time. Love should rather be something constant, like a cycle, like life. It is born, it grows, it changes, it ends, and it is reborn.
Easier said than done, I know. But thinking like this keeps me going. And if I am lucky, at the end of my life there will be at least one person to say I was right. Like Ola Salo sings, "The most radical thing to do is to love someone who loves you"
