Love: Part II (the first part was written way back in the day...you won't remember it)

What is it about this saveage, imperfect thing called love? Savage, you may ask? Yes, savage. For it is something that on one quite knows how to tame. This beast creeps and slithers its way through the Serengeti of the heart until it takes over. And then, its prey, the heart itself is left alone to rot under the hot sun that is life. Savage...love stalks through the heart only to conquer and then leave. It will bite, thrash, and toss you about until you know not which way is up and which is down! It will ravage and pillage and you will have nothing left because you gave it all up to this beast with the hope that you might keep love in return. To tame love you have to let it bite, thrash and in the end conquer. This thing, savage as it is, can be put on a leash...no, it won't go easily, but it can be done. How? Ah, that is of course not an easy thing to answer. How does one go about subduing something that can hardly be understood?

It takes respect. Love is wild and flighty, easily spooked and always ready to sprint in the opposite direction of where you wish it to go. You will think you have it cornered, that you have won and there is no where else for it to go...and then is it gone without a trace, leaving behind only the memories of how it made you feel...this is of course if you do not respect the power that love has.

If you do respect love, it is still a challenging feat to put it on a tether...but slightly less challenging than a wild goose chase. With respect love becomes a reasonable thing. It begins to consider that maybe you aren't out to hurt it and that you only wish to understand why it is the way it is. Love is wary of us just as we are of it. It fears being put into a box, a vast empty room, on a leash...love wishes to roam freem, to come and go..and though it hurts when it goes, and sometimes when it begins, we must let it. So, if you respect love enough that it allows you to rein it in a little closer, you need to know that it still needs to be able to run. Where? WHere does love go when it leave you lying alone and broken on your bedroom floor not wanting to move? It escapes. Sometimes love needs to return to its wild, untamable, natural state where it is free. If you respect it though, it will appear again and let you once again tie up and restrict it to your world, until the next time that it needs to run for a while. With respect, someday love may let you win, let you keep it...but it may not. Love may continue to come and go never letting you know its true purpose.

For what is love's true purpose? Is it to remain so that we can keep an eye on it? To give up it's wildness, to surrender to the leash, chain, rope or tether that we place around its neck? No, that is not what love was meant to do. Love's purpose is to enrich our lives. Ha! Enrich? When it leaves so many hurting and tired and desperate to get away? Ok, so sometimes love bites and it hurts and yes it scars, but that means that we have been priveleged enough to love, to experience this euphoria, this elation, the increased heart rate, sweaty palms and incoherent thoughts that this savage thing brings into our world. We are lucky enough to make no sense, and have everyone laugh at us because we are walking around talking about an idea. An invisible, un-catchable thing that has us smiling for no apparent reason! Love's true purpose is to embarass, mortify and make fools out of us. Granted, we do quite the job of that ourselves, but love, the idea of it, causes us to become so wrapped up that we don't even notice how silly we appear.

So, we have established that love is savage, comparable to some creature that wishes to be left to its own muses, undisturbed and uninterrupted. Now then, love is imperfect. Yes, it is. Because, though it wishes to ravage and roam through the hearts of unsuspecting by-standers, love wants a home. It searches for a place where it can grow, where it can germinate and spring up. Love wishes to establish itself, but fears what may happen if it gave in to this desire for a home. What should happen if love rooted in one heart and remained there forever?

Love is contradictory and confusing. It cannot be figured out and it will continue to surprise us and leave us standing, or sitting, with our mouths gaping and chins on the floor. It causes us to question everything that we have ever known or assumed about love. Are we normal to want this thing, this beast, tethered to our hearts so that was can observe its every move?

Yes, it is only normal to yearn for an understanding of that which we cannot understand. We will never be able to fully grasp why love is the way it is, why it makes us feel the way we feel...but we can try...