LOVE

As Dr. Konigsberg asked at the last staff meeting who wanted to write the next February newsletter about love, I felt my hand almost involuntarily go up, as if moved by an unseen force. Later I wondered what I could possibly write about love that the writers and poets of the past few thousand years haven’t said already. I then realized that reminders are helpful:

Love is a verb. It is a series of actions. It is commitment, to growth in tandem with others. It is a movement of energy, back and forth, back and forth. It is the force that binds everyone and everything in the universe to each other. It is the crucible in which most of us have many of our most joyous and painful experiences. The presence, lack, or loss of it has driven songwriters, teenaged and older, to write tens of thousands of songs.

It is devotion to self and other, probably in that order. It thrives in kindness, gratitude, and consideration. It is choked by fear of all kinds: jealousy, clinging, abuse, neediness. It is also the antidote to fear, in whose patient acceptance the constriction of fearfulness can loosen and dissolve. It brings freedom and also responsibility.

It is the extremely difficult realization that someone other than the self is real. It is not what I make up, but what is actually happening. It is the little moments of tenderness more than the grand gestures.

It is not really a feeling. Feelings come and go like waves. It’s more like the ocean underneath, content, immense, buoyantly holding everything up.

It helps if it’s fun, since then it washes away some of love’s pain. It works better if you don’t expect it to make you happy. It works better with someone else if it already works well in yourself. That means loving your own aloneness.

It is the force of the moon pulling on the tides, just as irresistible, and only visible through its effects. It is the ache of rivers moving towards the sea. It is the pull of sex. It is the union of two making one, falling apart again to make two, then becoming three. It is the act of eating, of pulling in something other to make self. It is the act of giving nourishment, of giving of self to help to feed other.

It’s like breathing: in, out, in out. It is the sweet ordeal of leaving, then coming back again.

Sex without love is not love; it’s just sex. But sex with the beloved in tenderness and joy can heal more pain than hours of therapy.

It can be addictive, like any pleasure. It is not pity, worship, rescue, fantasy, or escape.

It can be salvation, but only if held gently. A tight grip chokes it.

It is the great mystery of joining, whose yoke can create that third, intangible thing between two people. It’s different depending on who the two are: lovers, parents, children, relations, friends, animals, trees, plants, Earth, God. Though also somehow the same.

It is most of the things in this writing, and many things that are not in it.

It is not this poem, but it’s also in it:

You started a story, and asked
“Do you know this one?”
I said ‘yes’, and
you stopped.

Next time, I will say ‘no’,
because I want to hear the
telling unfurl from your lips,
open my heart to it,
feel it anew, or for the first time,
find out how much I may have
changed since the last telling,
and how much I need that story,
right now.

If healing is sending a new story through tissue,
then I must be open to the new.
Knowing already shuts the door.
Not knowing opens a space
That can be filled
With the telling
of another.

So go ye forth and love, sweetly, tenderly, amusingly, patiently, gratefully, joyously, however much you can this month, and all the months to come!

Dr. Conrad Sichler