This entry was inspired when I was sent this quote:
"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident." --St. Augustine
Sort of brilliant, no?
The interesting distinction that he makes when distinguishing between the feelings of being "in love" and actual love are quite interesting. Particularly when so often you will hear people say "I love you, but I am not in love with you." Apparently, said people would be neither. They have neither felt the incredible fireworks of the volatile eruption, nor do they feel that such an event has left them irrevocably linked to another person.
One main thing that I REALLY like about this statement, is that it portrays love as a violent and powerful force of nature. It is something that we have tried for milllenia to control, and have been truly unable to do so. When it comes into your life it is explosive, causing as much damage as possible before you can actually see the great things beneath it. If we go with St. Augustine's analogy, we are almost "in love" so that we can survive together long enough to actually love someone. Without the "breathless excitement and promises of eternal passion" we might very well be unwilling to get to the point with another person where our lives are truly entangled.
The entanglement he mentions is also particularly vivid. I think that image is something that anyone who has ever been in love can visualize for themselves and those they have truly felt for.
Despite all the powerful images he conjures, I think that in the end, the analogy fails to actually capture the entire truth. I would like to think of something without ignoring the man (or woman) involved in the moment, and all the various things that can happen with love. Looking towards nature, I would like to offer the following observation in its place:
Love is the act of two storms crashing together. The mere proximity to one another changes the makeup of each storm and all that surrounds it. Their meeting can be violent or calm. The collision can cause the storms to dissipate completely, rebound off one another in completely different directions, circle around one another for an indefinite period of time, or in the rarest of occasions, the two can merge, becoming a Perfect Storm, one that is greater than either of the two individual parts ever could have been alone.
I like the image of a storm because it can be long or short, and its strength and duration can be completely unrelated to one another. It can be beneficial to the land or destructive, but will always make an impact. Of course, it is constantly changing. Even those loves that last a lifetime, I believe do so not because they are stagnant, but rather that they change together.
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