What Hath Love Wrought?

Some notes on the effect of love thus far, to me. Sensitive readers, please bring along your airsick bag. You have been warned.

Mostly love has been the force that helps me balance contradictory forces:

I have found that love has guided me to provide to Jenny an Aspect of innocence: to learn from her and to follow her, but also to provide in me an Aspect of wisdom: to teach and to lead. These in balance make her feel like a woman, like a mother and a daughter.

I have found love has driven me to value the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual attributes independently in both of us. To cherish it in her, and to develop it in me. And to step away from comparing between us how we are similar or different, but instead to draw upon both of our attributes to solve problems or make progress.

Love caused me to understand that I do not want to take her to my world, and that I do not want her to take me away from my world, but instead that I want to forge a new place for both of us, that world of light, together.

I am fascinated that this love was born of independence and freedom: I had a total lack of expectations in any relationship with Jenny due to the fact I had not planned to live in Asia. At best a relationship with Jenny would be a fling, or a long distance relationship slowly expiring. I knew I would be leaving, and she did also. The ability — no, more so — the sensibility of leaving, it puts love into a different context. There must be a struggle to keep it alive, and to keep it from turning into a desire to possess, to become routine, to turn love into a kind of slavery. At the same time this must be balanced against our natural desire to avoid turning a beautiful dream into dreary reality — but it’s wrong headed thinking: it is really turning potential into wonderful reality, a hunk of dark rock into a brilliant diamond, an opportunity to turn two disconnected dreams into a single reality, two half lives into a whole, like Plato’s sorb-apple. It focused us away from the body which we know will be apart, and toward the mind and spirit. And maybe that gave us the time to think, to ponder, to consider the form and framework under which our love could survive.

And the travel and adventure certainly did not hurt.

Love is also challenging. It demands attention and work. It suffers from mis-set expecations. I’m guilty of this: I have set expectations poorly, and not kept myself free of unvoiced expectations of the other party rather than communicating expectations for goals together. On occasion I fail to be as truthful as I should, and then I correct this. It’s difficult.

And I worry too much. There are times an important perspective must be regained: to just be thankful for what we have and the journey we share, for however long we share it.

Ok, hopefully that’s it for the mushy stuff.