Hello

The way people love each other, it’s so complex. Does anyone remember who they were before being in love? Do we understand who we are afterward? Staying in a relationship for any other reason than being in love is wasteful energy. Writers, poets, musicians, all make a living writing about relationships: how they breakdown, sometimes repair — start over.

Before I was in love, I was a certain kind of man. I was not a considerate man. It really didn’t matter to me what, or how people felt about me. I was too engrossed in finding success. I’m a different person now, a better person. This is who I am after love. I am a happy man. I’m a better man because being in love taught me to share more.

This doesn’t mean I’m incapable of slipping back, which I often do.

For me, love was never about how many times we made love. Nor was it about how many times we made up after a fight. Love seemed more about how we would grow together through the truly tough times. Heartbreak is so little when placed into the eons of time. What we, each of us, gives back to life cannot be judged by its value, but rather its quality.

Happiness, I once heard, lies in the clear ideas of what you want and what you can achieve. That’s one interesting view. It doesn’t work for me, probably because I learned that when I wake up to sunshine, someone else is waking up to fog. Therefore, nothing in life is ever wholly harmonious.

Being in love is something people have done for thousands of years with varying degrees of success. It is a beautiful thing. Trust me, I’m an expert on its beauty. I have it in my life. That said, falling ‘in love’ is a truly precarious adventure. It’s kind of like being in prison, except you hope there’s no way out!

Love only ceases to be beautiful if one or the other decides to chip away at what makes it right and fair.

So, love can and must be a brilliant thing. Were it not so, it would have been given up a very long time ago. When love is abused, it can be a barbaric and destructive thing; the surest way for one person to lose their identity or worse.

Love and life are always out there. We are never too old to believe in it. Some need, I guess. I don’t know. Nothing is unattainable if the heart is open to the experience.

I know what a charmed existence is, and maybe it doesn’t matter if I don’t have the skill of an engineer or the intrigue of a scientist because I’ve got something. I can neither describe it, nor paint it, nor prove how it was, is, or will be. It’s just me, living in a privileged place and time. It’s just me writing, not able to say how I feel— not in command of my happy flight toward or away…meeting you here…hello!