On Love

I find myself often meditating on the concept of love. It is said to be many things. It is said to make the world go ‘round. Yet, in making the world go ‘round what else does it make us do? Does it make us go mad? Does it make us feel sad? Does it make us feel a connection to something in a world so often feeling devoid of meaning or is it that which gives us meaning,
what which makes the world bearable, livable?

What is it about love that makes us so…so scared? So happy? So vulnerable? What is it about love that splits us from ourselves, further than we are already as a split subject? What is it about love that is thought to be able to solve the problems...that if we just loved, things could be, would be, should be different?

Who is it that is allowed to love? Who is it that we are allowed to love? Who is it that we allow ourselves to love? Why is it that we hurt those we love? Must we inflict such hurt? Is such hurt, such pain necessary for love to be understood, known, felt?

How is it that we can walk away from love? Is it because we never know that it is love until, there, in the future, when we can look back on “now” and see that we had love? That we felt loved? That we loved?

Do we fool ourselves to believe that love is possible or do we fool ourselves to believe that love is impossible? Is love delusional? If love is delusional, what does it mean for those of us who love, or want to love, or have loved, or have lost love, or have, in an instant felt all of these – pushing and pulling us in different directions – this queer thing called love?

Do we ever walk away from love without knowing what we are walking away from? Is it easier to walk away from love, to re-fall in love somewhere else, some-time else so not to feel the creeping feeling that we will soon, fall and shatter the self, the self that we have produced and believe is real, true when perhaps that’s just it…we are not whole, we are always split, always divided? We can never love entirely for we know not ourselves entirely? Is love a failure because of this? Or in such a failure can love be something different? Something radical? Something strange?

Do we search for love and search for it often without ever asking what it is we are searching for or if what we are searching for is even something that can be searched for? Do we search for it when we’ve found it, hoping, believing, desiring, fantasizing that something different, something “better”, something of our dreams will finally come along? Or are we swept off our feet in a different time and place and in such a time and place have to just love and not look back…not looking back even if that means hurting the one we loved, there in a different time and place?
What happens to those who are left there, back there when others move, fall, or re-fall in love?

What do we do when we are left here, in the past, with our love there, somewhere there in a different time and place with a different love? Do we shatter further? Do we begin searching for love again, even if such a search is always in vain? Do we fall again…further in love in an attempt to fall out of love? Do we fall out of love and in doing so fall back in love…with someone else? With our self? Do we mourn our loss? Can we mourn such loss? Is such a loss grievable? What does such a loss require to be mourned?