Couldn't sleep last night, as so often happens. So I lay here instead and thought Deep Thoughts. I thought about the Nature of Love. Next to the Meaning of Life, I think that's probably one of the Deepest.
I think a lot about Love since I got divorced. I guess I'm still trying to puzzle out What Happened. And What Happens Next. I don't know if it's healthy to think about love so much. I don't know if love can bear much scrutiny. But that may be my jaded point of view. Certainly my love for Grayson knows no bounds, and can be disected under any microscope you like with no ill effects. So maybe all my Ponderment about love applies only to that love which is not biologically rooted. Visceral. I love Grayson like I love having hands and feet and eyes. He is a part of me... yet wonderfully, amazingly separate and always surprising. If he is my hands, it's like magical hands that are suddenly playing concert violin. Wow! Who knew they could do that?
I digress. Here's what I was thinking about Love. There are two kinds of Love (all great philosophical thoughts on love begin this way): The love that is built up over time, brick by brick, through patience and familiarity and will; and the love that grows organically, putting down roots into your heart and sending up leaves and stems and flowers, seemingly of its own volition. In the end, with one you have a structure as sturdy as the stuff you made it from (or the basis on which it was constructed), and with the other you end up with a living, growing thing that may change shape over time.
I lay there pondering the relative merits of each until I fell asleep. I guess the ideal love would be a tree house: something that grows from its own seed, but which you deliberately build and improve upon, with patience and care and forebearance. Forebearance seems to me to be vital. You have to be willing to let things go, accept and forgive. Don't you?
See? I question my own late-night conclusions. Nothing is certain in this world.
No comments:
Post a Comment