Has there been anything left unsaid about love?
We have covered everything that has anything to do with that four-letter word. Just check all those movies, songs, poems, and stories—the paintings, photographs, sculptures, and drawings too. Don’t forget about the letters, notes, texts, emails, and voicemails. And of course, all those love languages that our tongue could never articulate.
If love happens to you, it would probably justify the way it takes control over your being. That the butterflies in your stomach are a signal that your body detects it and fights to control it. If love is something that happens to you, what a potent and unforgiving thing it is.
If love is what you happen to choose, it would probably justify the ones that got away. All those texts unread, calls unanswered, words left unsaid, and feelings left abandoned. If love is something that you happen to choose, how many times have you not chosen it? What a terrible and confusing thing to choose it is.
So knowing all this, why do you still do it? Why do you keep running toward that hazardous flame knowing you will only get burnt? No one but poets can explain it better to you: Jack Gilbert in just two sentences—the opening and closing line of his poem, “Failing and Flying”
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
His arc may have ended short and small in the vast landscape of Greek mythology, but Icarus’ soaring victory when he flies high into the sky is a tale that keeps on telling. A tale about how feeling a feeling so strong could only lead to your downfall—how the false sense of security that that power gives you will never last but only for a moment. And yet, whatever happens after—for that short moment, he flies still.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
No one can argue that anything that starts will eventually end. Some connections may go disconnected, some relationships may conclude in some resolutions, and feelings come to meet their ending. But, all on earth and heaven above know that you feel it—that for a short moment in time, you feel the love that no one can take away from you. A triumph that is worth the risk.
And so, with all this in mind, there’s only one other thing that needs to be said—I need to say. In spite—or maybe because—of the many contradictions of love: its abundance and limitations, its beauty and crudeness, its start and its end. You can do whatever with it, take it however you want. But, one thing I know for sure, that at this very moment, whether it happens to me or I happen to choose it, I know this much:
I love you.
And all I want in life is a little more of this.