Cupid Valentino...

Some thoughts on the ultimate four-letter word: L. O. V. E. Having always been shy of relationships and pretty damned inadequate at sex, love has always been a mystery to me. Whenever I see couples(mostly married and straight) I see their wedding rings and then a flash of admiration and envy flushes through me. There. They've found THEIR mate. It CAN'T be that hard. Or sometimes I think: "How can they stay with ONE person year after YEAR? Don't they get TIRED of it?" But as I was working yesterday, I saw little traces of it. Before the plane was about to take off, a husband reached across the aisle to place a caring hand on the cheek of his wife...Or another husband carefully fixing his wife's hood against the cold at the airport curbside. That warmth, that caring...THAT's what love must be. Because let's face it, love can be the disease or it can be the cure. Or it can be BOTH. I'm just wondering where the whole dynamic of being with someone came about. The hormonal urge to perpetuate the species, I understand. But what is that NEED to be with someone else along life's journey? The fear of being alone? I imagine it must be a combination of things: Attractiveness, the urge to procreate, start a family, that need to belong...to somebody. That urge to CONNECT is a very powerful thing. This mystery has driven humanity's greatest creative talents to produce plays, songs, literature, and movies devoted to this very subject. Unfortunately(in my opinion), said subject has more often than not, been treated unrealistically...depicting love as the end-all, be-all, life-affirming experience in all of existnence. And maybe it IS. But I'll tell you THIS. Finding THE ONE, finding that euphoric TRUE LOVE isn't as easy as Hollywood and the popular music industry would have you believe. If it exists at all, it's VERY rare...but like that prime piece of real estate, everyone WANTS it. But everyone just CAN'T have it. That's cold reality. So why kid yourself? Hope, I guess. That's the thing that sells romance novels and soap operas...not to mention chick-flicks by the dozen. That unlikely but PURE love. People WANT to believe in this SO much, rationality doesn't play a part. But since when did love equal sanity? My best wishes to the people who have GENUINELY found this in life. If nothing else, it provides proof that true love between two people is an actual possibility. But for the rest of us...for ME...I will observe and view LOVE as the unpredictable affliction that it is... Happy Valentine's Day...