There's nothing you expect of me to earn love with you. You don't throw
down a gauntlet I'm supposed to jump over in order to qualify for your
love. You're not waiting for me to rescue you nor to slay dragons for
you. Around you, there's nothing I have to prove. You don't hold me to
any standards of accomplishment nor to degrees of achievement, and you
don't have an already picture in place which you expect me
to fit. All that stuff is secondary, probably irrelevant, when it comes
to the generosity of who you're being with me.
Listen carefully to what I just said, like you're tuning in to one
specific drop of water in a babbling brook: being love
with you ... different than being in love with you.
Recreate it carefully for yourself. Language it slowly, again and
again. Let it settle until you get it fully, effortlessly, easily,
completely. Don't parse it. Don't analyze it. Don't dissect its
grammar. Just grok it (as Robert Heinlein may have said).
Paradoxically,
being in love with you really doesn't have much to do with
you at all - nor with me either, for that matter. Furthermore,
being love
with you doesn't require being in love with you. As a
matter of fact, being in love with you only
interferes with
being love
with you - it only gets in the way.
I've been in love before. A few times. Being in love
doesn't last.
Wait! Are you listening "Being in love doesn't last" as
the words of a cynic? If so, you don't get it. They're not. When it
comes to love, if I'm anything at all beyond pragmatic, I'm a
romantic. I'm speaking as a romantic when I say "Being
in love doesn't last", and when I say it, my emphasis
is on the word "in".
So if being in love doesn't last, then when it comes to
love, what does last? When it comes to love, what lasts is
"being
love".
For the love which lasts, for the love which
works,
try on for size taking the "in" out of "I am in love with
you" when declaring love. Instead declare
"I am love with
you".
Here's why being in love doesn't last. Being
in love is a concept, in large part or even wholly
chemistry dependent, hormonal, pheromonal,
accidental.
It's automatic, autonomic. It owes a great deal of
acknowledgement for its presence in the first place simply to human
being's innate mechanical urge to reproduce. And it's
perfectly, innately endowed with these great feelings and
delicious sensations to make sure we're interested enough to want to.
We love being in love. We're crazy about being
in love. I mean that quite literally: we're
crazy about being in love. Consider this:
when we don't differentiate something automatic from something we
create ourselves, that's the very definition of "crazy".
There's no choice, no creativity, there's no responsibility, no
authorship, no authenticity in being in love. As
wonderful as it is, being in love happens when it happens
whenever it happens, and it ends when it ends whenever it
ends. It's a hormonal, pheromonal,
accidental,
automatic, autonomic, innate, mechanical, no choice survival
driven reproductive urge.
And when it ends, being in love moves on ... fast. The
female praying mantis is known to bite her ex-mate's head
clean off in order to feed his carcass to her offspring.
But don't be horrified by this seemingly callous and savage act: it's
an automatic, innate, mechanical, no choice survival driven urge
as well.
There's only one gift worth giving, and that's the gift of being with
another in a way that they get who they really are, in a way that
you're
being love
with them which grants them the space to be
being love
with you. Everything and anything else is simply so far down the list
of impact, import, and priority as to render it an almost complete and
total waste of time, effort, and energy.
When I'm with you, when you're with me, when it's just you and
I here with no one else around to distract, with no one
else around to interfere, I'm clear the gift you are, the gift you
bring, the gift you give is the one gift worth giving.
It's a
privilege
and a blessing being around you. It's my good fortune to know you.
You're awesome and I Love You. You're the real deal. You're true
gold.