This One Aspect is the Greatest Paradox of Love
I implore you to imagine the greatest love that you have ever experienced. I realize not all of us have truly experienced deep, seemingly endless, and soul fulfilling love. Some of you may be young, and yet to experience any sort of love whether it be a summer romance or a shy crush, others, hardened by the battle that love is, potentially left wrought with an end left wanting. For those of you that have not been through heart swelling love, connected through endless parlay of evocative exchange, imagine the love that you might have for your mother, father, sibling, stuffed animal, or most loving pet. That love you see in every romance film, perfect. Imagine that feeling of utter bliss, the cloud that left you floating above the grime the world throws at you. Beautiful isn’t it? Now I want you to continue that thought to the time when all of that, like the last placement of a block in Jenga, came toppling, end over end leaving you emotionally numb and forever scarred. Every fiber of your being longs endlessly for what was just lost. You lay helplessly by the death bed of your amore. Love has an evil mistress, and it brings about the greatest roller coaster ride of emotions that we experience in life. The highest highs and the lowest lows. The issue with love, just like a drug you build a tolerance to, you must keep injecting yourself with more and more to reach new highs. When you go cold turkey though, you may not surface for days, pounded by the depression of a love lost. Emotional withdrawal. That leaves us the great paradox of love, to get the most out of it you must love equal or more than the other person in the relationship. The problem though, is that whoever loves less has the greatest power in the relationship, and won’t be crushed endlessly like Sisyphus under a boulder of heartbreak. Unfortunately, they won’t ever be the most joyous either.
You may argue that in fact you can love fully and completely and get the most out of it, while refraining from getting hurt or constantly wondering if and when this great relationship is going to end, but lets be real, that is near impossible. After we have been through this process a couple times and experiencing “love” and losing it for one reason or another, you get scars and become much more guarded and hardened.
Finding love becomes harder and harder as it becomes a terrible process for you to let go of the past and to ultimately let go of the control of the relationship. You may be wondering why I keep saying that. Let’s think about it for a second. If you are able to remain more detached, or simply just less enthralled with the other person you can keep the relationship in your court so to speak. You can choose when you want to see them, what to talk about, how you communicate, how close they get to you, and how close you get to them. They don’t occupy your brain running around exhausted and defeated like rat in a maze that has no exit. In many respects it is like getting a small love buzz, but never becoming drunk to avoid the untimely hangover the next morning. In the eyes of the other person things are great, they are completely infatuated with you, and their heart is yours completely. That means you can manipulate them till your heart is content, and they are the one trying everything to make you happier and happier. Your loved one might give up sleep, food, friendship, ambition, and more just to see you happy. You may only occasionally return the favor, but they are stuck on you, and there is nothing they can do to change that. I know. You have the power. If things start to go south you have all the capabilities to remain removed emotionally and cut it off when the going gets tough. It becomes purely business, a transaction of emotion. That isn’t really love though, no matter how enjoyable you might think it is. Sure, when the relationship ends you are able to rebound quickly and find another “lover” but how long can you keep that up? Eventually there will be some emptiness inside you, dark and dank, yearning for more. However, you have the control when someone loves you more than you them, everything is on your terms, and little effort is required. Your mind, and your being is left to care for many more aspects of life, a trade off that might prove valuable. Who is really enjoying this process more though? Is anyone enjoying it as much as they can? Probably not. ]Although, that is not to say that enjoyment is not felt, as I can attest, it very much is. What I am talking about is the peaks and the valleys though. Highs are only experienced by seeing lows, and higher highs are only compared in such that the lows are in respect so much lower. Our level of happiness, in many respects is a function of how great our previous low of depression and self loathing was. This is why love is other worldly, and lust is merely great. Although, “great” can be enjoyed for a very long.
The second side of the paradox though, the side where you find the most amazing feeling any human can feel, with deep true love, can also be a double edged sword. You want to go into a relationship thinking that it will last forever, it probably won’t, especially if you are young. That will crush you, and it may not even be the other persons fault, it could have been a death, unfortunate circumstances, or just a timing issue. Continuing to give your all though will have amazing results when it comes to love. As soon as you love more than the other person, and are more fully devoted, you are the one who will all of a sudden be left helpless. Begging and grasping at what once existed, perhaps for years and years, will do nothing, and you will be left with shambles of a once outstanding relationship.
Looking back on that time you will learn an enormous amount, about yourself, about others, life, experience, emotions, everything. I have not denied the amount of pain you will feel though, for a very long time. Life is not a romantic comedy where everything will be hunky dory, nor is it a pornographic film where you can go from one person to the next with minimal emotion. Life is so much in between, and that is the greatest part. The question of this all becomes, what matters most to you, and are you willing to accept each set of consequences whether you love less or more? Do you want to learn the true depths of your inner self, and experience utter dejection, or do you want to never experience the dark corners of what lays within your psyche, but only be graced with glimpses of self discovery and growth? Do you like who you are right now, because that is going to change greatly one way or another if you make the wrong choice. Puzzling isn’t it? Even scary and overwhelming perhaps?
Right now, I would say I am one who loved and lost as you can see from my previous posts, and I am the one loving less in all my relationships now. This ensures that I stay in control of everything that happens and if a girl leaves my life, not a problem, life moves on. Without a doubt I am having a good time doing this, and am experiencing many different people, emotions, and moments that I will never forget. Late at night, on the few occasions when I have no one around me, like now, I think about having love again, and how perfect my life felt in so many ways. Often times I would give everything to go back to the first 6 months of that whole process. Alas, it is not my time to board that train, and quite likely not my time for awhile. This is the great paradox of love. As many singers and songwriters have said, love stinks. They keep singing about it though. To have the best love, and happiest life you must devote everything, mind, body, soul, self, time, as anything in life requires. To be hurt the least, and be able to move on faster, you have to commit less, and get less out of it. You can’t have your cake and eat it to, you will hurt one way or another, but you must choose what is right for you.
