"The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries; weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? any love is natural and beautiful that is within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy who, in their agitated concern mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell."
Truman Capote Other Voices Other Rooms
One of my favorite quotes.
I love that line "...and those of righteous envy who, in their agitated concern mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell." Love is not always a simple, linear concept. Love can be complicated, messy, misunderstood, and tragic, even. Love, like gravity, is a force not to be reckoned with. We try to bridle it, we try to contain it, we try to create it and destroy it and it plays by its own rules. My experience of love has been as beautiful as it has been painful, but it has been real.
What I know about love is that it shapes the essence of who we are. Even in our greatest failures in love, we go a little bit deeper into who we are. Ultimately, every time we risk connection with another person, we put a part of our essential self out there, raw and exposed to the elements of life. We are making an agreement of sorts with ourself and another person that we are willing to lose, that we are willing to hurt, that we are willing to feel something profound and beautiful that can only be achieved through risking with another human being.
That is why love is so scary...because, ultimately, we are not in control. We can choose to fight the current, exhaust ourselves and, ultimately, drown, or we go where the currents take us. I guess that is life, though...are we ever really in control of anything? Not really. All we can do is choose our attitude, choose how we express ourselves, choose love or fear. After that, we have to let go of the outcome. That used to really scare me, but there is great relief in knowing that we don't have to hold it all...that we can do our part and then let it go.
6 comments:
ok....big lie...it still scares the shit out of me.
You're funny, being first to comment on your own post.
Well, I figured I'd rather be the first person to call me out on an obvious big fat lie rather than suffer public humiliation via my loving friends.
Plus, I tricked myself into feeling popular for like a milli-second when I saw there was a post to my blog...then I realized it was my own.
Not a good sign.
I do the same thing.
Hmmmm,this is too perfect for my current situation. My brain tells me in every way what I SHOULD do, and yet, I am guided completely by what I know to be true in my heart. Well, actually, I find it ironic that the feeling of love feels like it is in the heart when we know that it is a brain thing really. It just goes to show that when it is true love, it feels like it is at the core of your being. It feels like your life blood is draining out of you when it hurts and feels like you have been given an injection of adrenalyn when it is good. So really, my brain tells me no, and then tells me yes, but makes it feel like my heart is at work in all of it, abdicating all responsibility for its schizoprenic tendencies.
so...if love scares you, are you choosing love or fear?
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