Musing: On Non-Reflected Love

 

To SC, time is the only useful tool right now

but maybe this will take the edge off for a minute.

 

I was going to title this “Musings on Unrequited Love” but that is just way too dramatic for what I am going to propose.  Plus, it would have caused the men to stop reading; perhaps this title aroused enough curiosity for a few of them to stick it out. 

(I am actually back in Beagle…another post on my travels coming soon.)

This idea first came to me last March; I was in Seattle, and had spent the day visiting Alan’s plaque, enjoying the city and dining with the kids.  I was laying in my delightfully high-thread-count bed at the Fairmont and feeling, well, just so right.  Easy.  Comfortable.  Content.  Bourbon.  (See guys, something for giving it a try.)  All those words that describe the delightful bubble of being where nothing seems difficult and everything seems connected.  It felt like a love bubble—for everything—from people to trees to mountains to the tall concrete buildings outside my window.  It was serene.

That is one of the greatest lessons Alan’s death has taught me:  You don’t need to have love reflected back in order to enjoy the benefits of “being in love”.  That person doesn’t have to physically be in your life.   I still love Alan and that feeling makes me happy—it doesn’t matter that he cannot reflect it back to me.  Laying there I thought, “Is this why humans fall in love?  To ensure the energy of love continues to flow out into the world?  Is the purpose of love simply to Love not necessarily to Be Loved?” 

Whatever the reason, it is a delightful place from which to experience life on this planet. 

I was sharing this with a dear friend the next morning as we dried off over coffee in a typically cozy Seattle coffee house (it was raining like hell that weekend.)  She, being way ahead of me on the evolutionary ladder, listened patiently as I explained my theory; as anticipated, very little explanation was actually needed.  I quickly concluded:

              “So then I just hung out in this love bubble, it was amazing!”

              “Yes! I know just what you are talking about. It’s heavenly; it is almost orgasmic”, she replied.

              “Well, you were always quicker to the trigger on that than me”, we laughed for a minute before I continued, “I don’t know about orgasmic but it sure was dreamy.”

Now, it’s not like I float around in this bubble all day every day; like all experiences in life, it comes and goes.  But now that I know it is there, I often let it cover me as I fall asleep.

-K

PS:  Just a reminder that the automatic email notification from the blog will not be working soon.  I will Tweet out the link, @kitrinabryant, or you can always find the latest posting on the site itself.  :-)