to love and to be loved

what greater reason do you need?

i always think that i’m kind of like a walking encyclopedia of the silly little quotes that have made me cry: seeds falling into the cracks in my mind and staying there, growing into a little flower-filled garden path that make the meanders inside my mind a sweeter time.

it’s been a little more than a week of the new year, and it’s been weird. january has started feeling like a liminal space: the lack of forced structure from an academic insitution makes everything feel like it’s been suspended mid-air. i also got really, really sick, which tends to colour life a little gray.

consequently, it’s made me reflect on my life, as one does, specifically about what i think i’m here for. while i don’t have an answer (does anyone ever?) the closest i’ve got is this dogged determination to see the love in the world. as silly as it sounds, i think that’s why i’m here: to love and to be loved.

before sunset (the superior of the before series imo) has a snippet of conversation where jesse and celine discuss human nature, and how it’s like people have their own innate set-points. celine points this out by saying that when she rereads her old journals, it fascinates her that her responses and methods of coping, while more mature, remain more or less the same from when she was young. it’s a part of you as a person: the way you think, what your mind is inclined to when you’re going through life.

i think that one of my innate set-points is my inherent inclination towards romance. not that i’m always trying to find a partner (i think a universe in which i am not complaining about me being single is far out of reach), but that i see love everywhere i go. there is love in the way my best friend wishes me a good morning every day, love in the bread my mother keeps out for the squirrels, and love in the space between you and me.

i started writing this post because i have so many little snippets swirling around in my head of quotes that make me feel love, some that make me cry, some that i want to dissect, some that just make me feel. so here we go! the beginnings of my thesis, titled: the core of the universe is love.

“to love life, love it even when you have no stomach for it.”

we all know how every billionaire randomly went to space some time ago, right? but no one ever talks about the guy who went there, turned around and said hey. fuck this. everything worth anything is back there on earth. (his name is william shatner btw. go read his guardian article on the experience.)

and he’s right. the universe is marvelous because we’re marveling at it from here. the world is beautiful because of the people in it. because of the stupidly cheerful birds that wake me up every morning. because of the breeze that ruffles the trees and gently blows my hair out of my eyes. because of the books other people write that i get to read and love or hate or have messy, complicated feelings about. because of the people i get to love or hate or have messy, complicated feelings about.

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about.
But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.”

— Alice Walker, The Color Purple

love: the way my friends ask me how my day has been. the way i want to know how their day has been. the way i want to punch the people that hurt them. you know that quote, don’t you? it’s unfair that we laughed together but you cried alone. i love you. there is love in knowing. i think i am made brave by my friends; which is to say i am made brave by love.

everyone knows every good story has love at it’s core. even when the dude-bros try to say it doesn’t. “if i loved you less i might be able to talk about it more” “if you are intolerable let me be the one to tolerate you” “i could recognize him by touch alone” “on purpose i love you on purpose” “whatever our souls are made of his and mine are the same” “i am half agony half hope” “you have bewitched me body and soul and i love love love you” “he is half of my soul as the poets say” “who will come into my kitchen and be hungry for me”

Even if I go back hundreds of times,

my choice is always You

Hug my body even if it hurts, it's okay

Among the cold and harsh waves

I need your heat, You are my Volcano

-Volcano, Han

“He kisses—how do I explain it? Like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person. Only now, only you.”
― Andrew Sean Greer, Less

i think i started writing this because even though i love being alive, i tend to forget. i am, by nature, someone who needs her alone time, and forgets to distinguish between necessary alone time and isolation. i also tend to focus on the bad things, the things that irritate me and make me want to curl up in a little ball on the floor. everyone needs a reminder now and again. vulnerability is hard. forgiveness is hard. getting through a day when you’re tired and lonely is hard. but not impossible. as rilke says in his letters to a young poet:

love life, and it will love you back.

another thing about love: if you get used to it, you can forget it’s there. when i say this, i’m referring to the love i get from my parents. on a random day, it’s not something i thought about (especially when i was younger), but when i spend time away from them and return, it hits me like a truck. in all of my need to be independent and free, there will be something melancholic about leaving them behind. if i were to try to capture something as fierce as their love for me: how do i put this? it’s like coming home on a cold night to a warm blanket and a cup of hot chocolate. shelter in the rain. soft happy laughter, with people who have known and loved me every minute i have been on this planet. that’s what they don’t tell you about having parents who had you late: you hope, every day, that you will have as much time with them as you can. because anything else is terrifying. aaaand now i’m crying.

anyway, take it slow. love truly, deeply, genuinely. love will find you, in ways you wouldn’t have ever imagined.

"Why did you call me at the office today?”
“I had nothing to do. I wanted to hear your voice.”
(In The Mood For Love, 2000)