The Path of Thorns

Love.

Arguably the most common feeling, or thought, or reasoning, for almost everything in this world.  It’s one of the most open-ended words to define, and certainly one that’s just as misunderstood as it is carefully examined.  It’s a feeling all artists touch on, be it their falling in love, falling out of love, doing something for love, saying something for love, being bitter and rejecting love, dumbing down love, or claiming it doesn’t even exist and that it’s just a fancy way to say infatuation or lust.

I looked up a few definitions of love.  The first one was certainly interesting:

“any object of warm affection or devotion; “the theater was her first love”; “he has a passion for cock fighting”; ”

What’s interesting about that was, my first reaction was to laugh at that second example.  A passion…or love…for cock fighting?  Out of all the things you could love and have a passion for?  But that just goes to show how vast love can be taken or felt. 

A ‘first love’, as in the first example, seems to be used when someone first finds their niche, or what they enjoy doing more than anything they have previously.  It’s another interesting way of using the word because you consider love to be mutual, and with some sort of affection shown.  Yet one could counterpoint by arguing that a theater could love the person back, by existing and being there for her to find her talent and excitement within.  By being there as a place of refuge, a place of success.  That goes to show how far love really can go; by being there, you can create love, and hope, and serenity.

I found another interesting definition of love:

“…be enamored or in love with; “She loves her husband deeply” ”

Enamored is essentially the actual feeling of falling in love; the bonding that comes with it.  I will argue that this is most everyone’s utmost demand for love.  We find it, or attempt to find it, in any and all places; a coffee shop, a bar or club, online and through personals, through friends and family, at a party, and just throughout our daily lives. 

People looking for it too hard threaten the possibility of finding a false sense of it, or an incomplete love that leaves us feeling more lonely and/or alone than we did before it occurred.  The world is very tough, considered to be a lifelong fight and struggle to survive and find happiness in our mortality, and we all want someone to fight alongside us in battle.  It is for that reason that many people settle for and accept, and basically expect this lesser love.  As long as SOMEONE’s there, someone who we think knows us and understands us to a degree, most will accept the chronic issues and faults that come along with such a relationship.  It’s why many people bring back into their lives though that cheat, or lie, or steal, or hurt us in many other factions.  We bring them back out of familiarity; because we feel we may not deserve more, or our hearts and minds have become lethargic, but with the underlying reason that we need someone to help us  battle through life, and it may be easier to do so with imperfections than take our whole lives fighting it alone in hopes that perfect love will come along.  A perfect love no longer exists or is even deemed a possibility by many, and it really never was.  To err is to be human, so many unforgivable thoughts and actions are, in fact, forgiven.  And this lesser love continues.

My thought has been, and has matured over the past decade; do I REALLY want to spend the rest of my life with this person?  Would there be cracks in our relationship that would lead to a lesser love?  Can I wake up every morning, see this face, and know I have a good life because of this person?  Do I trust living with them in our home, telling them our deepest thoughts and ideals, and letting down every single teeny tiny wall we have?  Will that person never betray me, never hurt me, never insult the love we’ve created? 

Many have been duped after answering ‘yes’ to all of the above questions – another reason many accept lesser love, or the love of a place, or of our work, or of our friends & family only, with romance as secondary.  If one truly answers ‘yes’ to those questions, and are double-crossed, our hearts break.  That is to say, we feel the deepest hurt and betrayal in the darkest and most hidden part of our selves because of what all we let down for the person, and how much we had led them in.  If an associate hurts you, it’s nowhere near the pain of someone closest to us doing the same.  Humans can be unpredictable, and many question if they ever fully and thoroughly know the one we’re with.  Or the one we want to be with.

To have a non-human ‘first love’, like the previously mentioned theater, is safer for many.  It’s a place, it’s a lifestyle, it’s what you take it to be.  You always know where it is, you make it to be the relationship of your choice.  It’s always there.  If our first love is a self-made painting, it’s safe because it shows the colors of our choice, it’s love we created that exists as long as the painting is loved.  There’s no risk in a painting doing you wrong.

In the end, we all want to come home from the theater, or glance away from our painting, and look around us.  Many don’t mind going home every night alone, waking up alone, cooking alone, and planning their lives out alone.  Many others simply do so with friends and family.  Many have pets to fill something best filled with the love returned of another, whether we admit it or not.  At some point, all of these people who choose alternatives to a perfect love, by default or by choice, will ask themselves who notices.  Who cares what we do?  Who cares how we look?  Who cares what our dreams and thoughts are?  Why bother?

We bother because we all want, in some feeling in some crevice in our hearts and minds, or the pits of or stomachs, during a moment of weakness or self-pity or realization, that perfect love.  Knowing that someone or something can knock you down, and someone’s there to break your fall.  That someone that your heart knows will always be there for you, without doubt or question.  That two people can struggle through a single fight of life means a better chance at success, and a wonderful chance of happiness and safety.  And love.

In the end, our hearts and minds are there in existence to fulfill a promise.  No matter when, or how, or if ever it’s realized or noted, their goals are to fulfill that promise to another pair.  And fall into a perfect love.