So This Is Love...?

"What would I think of myself if I walked away from love because I was scared of death?"

The question settled in my mind tonight as I drove home from a chiropractic appointment and the fast food dinner afterward.  It spiked me and I winced, and the deepening color of the sky made me weep, a little.

It is cooler and windy here as I write, weather I find comforting and conducive to being in my own head.  The change in temperature is welcome after a few days of warmish, humid days.  We had some rain and some sun, but the days did not jibe with my notions of good fall weather.

I'm not a big fan of the humid and warm.  It's October, not July, and I digs mah partly cloudy breeze.

The whisper and rush of the wind, that raspy scrape of dry leaves along concrete sidewalks, the promise of change in the air...it makes me want to sit in my deck chair and smoke a pipe.  I have an image of sitting on a wooden deck outside a seaside cottage, listening to the wind and watching the waves in the faint moonlight.

Sitting in that chair, on that deck, and pondering the difficulties of love in this modern life.  In particular, the difficulties of love in my modern life.  Because, honestly?  I do not feel so modern.  Technology has supposedly made it easier to meet people, and in some ways that is true, but it seems weak at true connection.  A conundrum for me.  I am a pen-and-paper sort of chap in a PDA world.

I use technology because I have to, its inescapable, and it does have some advantages.  Speed, convenience, connectivity and everything on demand.  That's great, if one's primary concerns are rooted in efficiency, productivity and timekeeping.  But what about simply living, knowing true love, which I believe is difficult if not impossible to do if one is plugged in all the time.

Even connoisseurs of wine would get tired of it if all they ever had to drink was Beaujolais Nouveau.

I had nothing to drink tonight.  Though the weather is perfect for a wee dram, not even the fine single malts sitting on my kitchen shelf could stir enough interest for me to pour one.  No, tonight, I wanted clear-headed rest while I sat and meditated on the sound of October wind and the clicking of the keys.

And love.

What would I think of myself if I walked away from love because I was scared of death?  Probably not much.  The kind of love I'm talking about isn't a fling or a simple infatuation.  It is the kind of love that is deep and broad.  It is the kind of love that means you want more for the person you love than you want for yourself.  It is a love that sees the calluses, the bad spots, the crises...and accepts the other anyway.

It is a love that accepts loss as a part of growth, and communion.

I do not want to and would not willingly walk away from that...but life sometimes forces the issue.  This is why the darkening sky made me weep: the sun goes down, the sky fades from cerulean into indigo into black, and we must live with it.  Sometimes the dark seems like it is all-consuming and that it won't end.

Not having love is like that, and that is part of life.  I know now that I, like everyone else, do not have the luxury of turning aside true love because it may be difficult or present impossibilities.  This is what the wind and the night sounds tell me.  And as hard as it is for me to accept, I believe them.  I'll sit in that chair on the deck, waiting for the dawn which I have to believe must come.

I tell myself, this time, when Love rises I'll not walk away from the heat, no matter what.  I cannot.  I have to live with myself, if someone else is to live with me.