I do what I do. I have tried being productive. I have tried following set schemes with predetermined goals. None of that has worked. Now, I reach the point of exhaustion and let my mind flit back and forth amongst within the tangley tree of genius ideas growing inside my heart and brain.
Tangley, tangley… There’s nothing left but words that don’t exist and ideas that could change the world if only someone else could hear them. This mishmash of phrases, if strung together correctly, would comprise the greatest book ever written, and I lie in it, doing nothing about it, wishing I would but not. Just lying still, waiting—waiting for love to come, wanting it so badly I can taste it.
A voice inside assures me that it is coming, that it is very near—this love I want. And it reminds me of all the love I currently have—love that, although it is not the romantic, all-enduring, physically and emotionally satisfying love I envision, is a great love of many different kinds from many different people. For who among us are lucky enough to receive all the kinds of love we need from a single person? The best of us stumble across someone who contains most of them. The majority find someone who satisfy enough. Perhaps others settle for less.
The combination of people in our lives represents all the different kinds of love available, and there are many kinds of love. We keep finding new kinds as we meet each new person along the way or enter into new levels of intimacy with old friends. Love changes, grows, fades, evolves, mutates, and teaches us everything.
More than any book I have read or lecture I’ve attended, more than any pamphlet, meeting, retreat, self-improvement/actualization/reflection activity, technique, or spiritual event, love—and always love—teaches me. The wonder of love transcends any other experience, whether figuring out how to build a career, how to solve an equation, or how to lace a pair of shoes. More than functional lessons, love—not the projects and causes and efforts I participate in—gives me all I need to know, teaching and amazing me in new ways every time.
I adore the big loves, the loves that sweep me off my feet and take me to new places in life I wouldn’t have known to go before love and I collided. It rescues me every time. And I want a rescue now—and every day. We all need love every day. But I’m praying for a big one, a magic one, a knock-your-socks-off, send-you-into-new-worlds love.
It doesn’t have to be for a person; it doesn’t have to be romantic (although those tend to be most powerful), just a love that takes me somewhere I cannot see on my own. I need new sight. And love grows new eyes.