Sunday, 4 August
 |
| Couple |
Good Morning Jacob…
We’re entering the serious heat of summer. We’ve had a generous helping of rainfall here
in North Carolina and the ground beneath our feet steams with life’s
manufactured bounty. Everything everywhere
is plump from prosperous times. The sun
overhead bakes all of our undertakings until they positively split open from an
overabundance of goodness. All the while
chloroplast factories across the landscape are pushing photosynthetic
operations to levels unseen since dinosaurs lounged in swamps and mosquitos were
the size of a box of Milk Duds. If you
stop what you’re doing you can hear, wafting in the breeze, the Mother Nature
Chorale sing another chorus… “Come on, Baby.
Let the good times roll!”
Somehow our planet triggered this riotous demonstration of imaginative
molecular-based life and, after three and a half billion years of tweaking the
global organism, we can boil this experience down to the simple statement that
two minds speaking to one another makes for far more satisfying consciousness than a single mind thinking alone.
That’s it. Existence is best
poked from multiple sides simultaneously by two people having a shared desire
to find something beyond being merely awake.
Why only two? For the same reason
there are not three sexes, or more. Find
me a love song about a committee. It isn’t
a thing of beauty. It may take many
hands to bring a dream to reality but that dream begins with a single mind in
love with another single mind. I don’t
know why we become so focused on another someone looking back at their other
someone that happens to be oneself. I suspect
the merging of minds is too complicated to be successful when more than two are
involved. Put three people in the mix and we rely
increasingly on accommodating the invariable third party out. It quickly becomes two people and the
distraction. It is true the person on
the outside trying to get in may vary with the circumstance but the result is
always a tension that blocks real fulfillment for anyone.
I think we find this dynamic to be true at a very early age. It’s a common enough experience to be
instinctual. Few matters of the mind or
of the heart are as hard-wired into the human soul as is falling in love. At least that’s what songs used to tell us
when we were sixteen. That may be the
only age when we actually experience torrid, undiluted romantic love. After that life gets complicated real
quick. There’s nothing like a personal
relationship to cause a promising career to jump the tracks. Feeling love for another can sometimes have
the intensity of being under the influence of a drug. We say and do things beyond the comprehension
of more rational minds. Don’t blame
me. I’m in love.
“Excuse me. I’m sorry but I have
to interrupt this conversation here and now.
The problem is you’re mistaking immature, narcissistic feelings and
sexual passions for adult love. Let’s be
clear. True expressions of love are actually
quite responsible. I think you’ve been
characterizing love as some overwhelming desire for self-gratification. This overweening emotional concern for self leads
to delusional relationships that inevitably end badly. This kind of story is related countless times
by people with a couple of drinks under their belt in bars everywhere. You don’t raise families and make the house
payment with those kinds of notions.”
Thank you for the correction. Where
was I? OK, here’s the point. Maybe society is too complicated and we are all
too civilized to fall in love. Love isn’t
manageable. It’s playing with fire. Compatibility is the far safer bet. Intense feelings scramble the egg. Cozy doesn’t break the yolk. Look at your breakfast table for
guidance. If everything is neat and
orderly then you should definitely stick with cozy. If there’s a cigarette butt stashed out among
the unfinished hash browns then the chances are you’ve got someone across from
you that is one fiery bundle and your life is overloaded with chaos. Truth is, though, you wouldn’t have it any
other way.
Love,
Dad
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