Lovvve

One of the many poems I like in Marie Howe's latest, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, is "After the Movie," in which appear the following lines:

Simone Weil says that when you really love you are able to look at someone / you want to eat and not eat them.

I think this is the best definition of love I've encountered.

Yes, I've loved, and I suppose most everyone has. But I have a very specific definition of what it means to be in love, and based on that I can say I've never experienced it.

In my definition, to be in love is a mutual experience. You both want to eat each other, but you don't. "Both" is the operative word here.

And never being in love, never being content in a relationship has become so much a part of my identity that I feel like a stranger to myself when I start to think maybe such contentment is possible. But I snap back to reality soon enough - not necessarily because I want to, but because reality reveals itself to me.

One of the challenges in life might be to come to terms with the realization that some of us may not get what we want. And we have to learn to cope with it. We are not born entitled to anything. The Big Love, the being in love, where you want to eat him (or her) but don't, and he (or she) wants to eat you but doesn't ... well, not everyone gets to experience that. Some people do; some don't. Perhaps in another life, a parallel universe, or... I don't know... if you believe in that sort of thing.