So, recently, I've been looking back at all my past relationships, both good and bad. It's a rather convoluted path down my "romantic history", and while it raises a few chuckles, now that I’m older and hopefully wiser, I ask myself…"was I ever really in love?"…
Oh sure, I tell everyone (and myself) that I think I'm in love, but was it really love? There are times when I don't really think that I've ever fallen in love with anyone before. I'm too selfish and emotionally aloof to give myself so freely. I get all these feelings, but they fizzle all too soon. Are they not just junior-high school crushes, then "love"?
This is not to say that I don't feel any emotion at all. But what I feel doesn't seem to have the all encompassing passion that everyone else seems to feel. Is there something wrong with me? What is missing or lacking, that won't allow me to "fall in love"?
Or is "love" just a myth - like the Lochness Monster and Elvis?
Do we, as a human race, obsess about finding a connection with someone, with anyone so desperately, that we've fooled ourselves into thinking that there is such an emotion as "love"? Is love the emotion we call when we want to keep the loneliness away?
Once upon a time, when we were still children, warm in the arms of our mothers, we felt safe and comforted. That the love and safety we felt as a child, is the only love that there is? Ever since then, we've merely been searching for a substitute for the security that we once had?
I have a friend; he is a good and decent man. He diligently goes to church every Sunday, and obeys the morals and values that they embraced. He never stole, and if he ever did lie, none of us ever caught him at it. When his brother died this past year, he was inconsolable at the funeral. The words of comfort that the clergy were murmuring, the hugs and sympathy by the family and friends didn't touch him. Feeling sad at my own loss, but feeling even more desolate at the sight of my friend's anguish.
"He is with God now," I murmured, although I, myself did not believe in such things.
He looked at me with such empty eyes. "There is no God."
"You're just grief stricken," I objected.
"No. I never believed. I was never filled with the faith."
"But…you…you go to church and…"
"I go because I was so empty inside. I hope that by going…that by surrounding myself with the trappings of faith, one day, I too will be filled with belief."
Could it be? That we, too surround ourselves with the trappings? Of true love and faith everlasting? That the emotions that we profess to have, are just the empty mutterings of lonely souls?
Look at the news. All too often, marriages end in divorce. Not from anything horrible, but because someone fell in love with another person. Is love so nebulous? What happened to the stories of Romeo and Juliet? Of Cupid and Psyche? Were they just merely that? Stories and myth to ease the desperation?
So, what have all these poets been babbling about, all these years? Is it real, or like the ancient alchemists, looking to turn lead into gold --- that all we have are lumps of lead in our souls, but we fool ourselves into thinking it's gold...?
I don't know. I suppose it's one of those things that philosophers have been arguing about for years...
But where does that leave me?
Do you believe in love?