A Man Alone

I've been thinking more and more as of late about the notion of love; it's no secret that for better half of my 20s I was of the mind that love was at best a child's game and at worst an all consuming and entirely destructive endeavor. Either way it was of no interest to me. However, recent experiences in both my life and work have compelled me to revisit this matter that had previously been thought on my part to be a closed case. Without going into all the maudlin details I have over the past 10 or so months begun to reconsider my opinion on love. While I still am of the mind that love, unrequited, can be an all consuming and entirely destructive sensation I have begun to view love to being akin to Orlando or a good whiskey. Too much and you might find yourself delirious but none at all and one can find themselves to be without a pulse. Although I have no pleasant memories of the happiest place on earth the sheer horror memories of it evoke in me acts as a sort of baseline reading of everything I detest and loathe and in that way is by no means without merit. Much in the same way I have begun to develop an appreciation for love, even unrequited, as although the sensation it evokes in me is by no means pleasant it is nonetheless invigorating, like free fall, it reminds us that we are alive. And it is this wellspring of passion that love evokes that is it's true redemptive power. For it is by approaching our mortality, whether real or imagined, that we are compelled to live. You see, the old saying had it all wrong. It isn't better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all but rather that without love, whether lost or not, one cannot know if they ever lived at all. Love is our baseline, love tells us that we are alive in the first place. Have you ever mourned the loss of someone whose existence mustered only ambivalence in you? Love allows for loss by giving life value in the first place. This is what we mean when we speak of the redemptive power of love.