Colette Obrien

What if the Big Bang were the first kiss?

Aphrodite’s favorite child is Eros, or as the Romans named him, Amour. What does it mean to be the child of the goddess of Love but that he is her messenger? When that powerful goddess chooses to unite 2 objects by sending her son with his quiver of arrows, union is assured. Eros is the connecting force sent by the essence; Aphrodite.

The planet we inhabit revolves around a sun in a spiraling galaxy. On earth, the constant creation of life depends on a cycle of seasons; each one following the other in a continual round.  For life as we know it to endure, there must be a time of birth, growth, and destruction.

Aphrodite/Eros assure creation. Without the attraction of objects to one another there would be no new life.  The earth would stop spinning; the sun, having lost an admirer, would wobble out of control in dark despair and lose its place in the galaxy; with the loss of one of its members the billions of other stars would also loss hope/connection, and very quickly, what began as a first kiss, would end in a rout of unconnected atoms.

Thus spoke an incurable romantic. 

But seriously, love connects everything– it is a force–and maybe what physics calls the electromagnetic force is what we call love. Maybe the reason that we as humans cannot resist Eros’ arrow is because it’s correct to be so humbled; to realize through the experience of inescapable attraction, we’re being moved by a greater force than our small wills, and that that force is benevolent.

Wikipedia:

• In physics, attraction may refer to gravity or to the electromagnetic force
• Interpersonal attraction – the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships.

At the level of physics, attraction describes a force that draws 2 objects together; is that the same thing as 2 people being attracted to one another? In other words, is there volition in the apparent choice to befriend another, or is it fated ? As human beings we believe we’re choosing when we relate to another, but is that a fact, or our ego’s claiming power when it, like a leaf on the wind, is being moved by something outside its awareness? The proverbial can of worms; fate or free-will.

When shot by Eros’  arrow of love, choice is not an option; we Fall in Love.  Most of us have had the experience of that trickster character and his mischievous arrows; even the Greek God Zeus trembled at his name.  The individual ego is flooded with love/attraction for an object, and cannot stop thinking or feeling about that special other.  What suddenly made that other so attractive? We call it mystery, chemistry, projection of our idealized lover, meeting with the soul-mate, but by whatever name we call it, we are helpless to resist and like the moth to the flame, we go. Burning with desire, we becoming fools for love.

The last time Eros shot me, I determined, resolutely, that never again did I wish to be so wounded.  Though painful in youth, the experience of being overwhelmed by the need for another as an adult was excruciating.  Like body-surfing an ocean wave,  it was exhilarating but when the wave pulls you under and twirls you around and around and won’t let you up for air, it is not so much fun.

 I love to love but do not enjoy being in love.  Like Zeus I know better than to believe I can prevent Eros from shooting me, if he will, but what does that mean, and what is the difference?

Do we really ever choose who to befriend, or is it all fated, karmic? And like the extreme of Falling in Love, is all love/attraction a kind of given that we experience but do not ever actually have a choice about?

Who the heck is Eros anyway? More tomorrow.

Because love is defined by Webster as; a deep and tender feeling of affection for another, and continues for a long paragraph only to describe the same thing over and over, it is no wonder we’re confused.

Many cultures have several different words for the kinds of love; intimate/sexual love, love of parents, love of children, love of siblings, love of animals, love of objects, love of ideas, love of country, etc..In English there is only one and it is woefuly inadequate.  Webster would have us believe that all kinds of love are a FEELING.  

One usually has a feeling asociated with the experience of loving, but is that what love is? What if we looked at it as a verb; not as a feeling, nor limit it to the kinds of love there are?  As a verb it connects.  What kills love is disconnection; the executioner.

As a verb, love is the action of connecting two or more objects–of any kind. We are seldom, if ever, aware of the fact that every atom in the universe is connected to every other, and that applies to everything in existence. It is, we are, ALL ONE.  And since love is connection, how is it possible to kill love?

Fundamentally we cannot, but what we can do is break the conscious bond.  The unconscious bond is there all the time no matter what we do, but as humans with choice–with consciousness–we can choose to make a connection to an other that is beyond the fundamental law of the universe. 

Most of us wish to do that.  Most of us love to love and to love in all the ways love can be experienced. We enjoy caring, of having an object matter to us, and of mattering to another. 

1. The first and fastest way to kill love is to care more for the feeling than for the object we’re connecting to; self centeredness or basic narcissism.

2. Another useful tool is to strangle it by gripping the object tightly; fear of loss, another form of narcissism.

3. Then there is the tried and true ax of jealousy and possessiveness; need I repeat–narcissism.

4. Neglect works well; self-obsorption.                                                       

Love’s executioner is one’s self.  Like an ax, self-centeredness in its myriad forms separates one from the love object and breaks the conscious bond.  Love is dead.

 Where I live on a mountain songbirds are unusual, yet as of three days ago, a beautiful singer has wakened me each morning. The sound is delirious and draws me happily from my bed.  Hope does spring eternal, he seems to say, and believing him, I venture once again into the world with a light step, wondering what this day will bring.

 How is this possible after 60 years of days to still be so inspired?

Writing about Snow White in the last post, I suggested that being open and accepting whatever comes -which doesn’t mean we have to like it, by the way–is a way of living that has merit.

 The songbird reminds me of the attitude life has; life as an object like myself which has it’s likes and dislikes; it’s seasons, its moods(the weather), yet in that continual round Life always returns to spring and spring is hope eternal. Not each moment, for there are the other attitudes as well, but it always returns and no matter how sad, or dejected or discouraged or tired I am, it will return eventually and I will hear the song bird and be glad to be here and curious about this day.

Troubadours, those classic purveyors of song, grace the woods with their melodies and call us to venture once again into the unknown; into spring where we may be foolish again, we may be careless, as in Camelot; the Lusty Month of May: when everyone throws self-control away. And everyone makes divine mistakes.

May our mistakes be divine; that is, accepted, as we traipse(spelling?)through the tulips yet again in search of love.

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A dream, like a dragonfly, alluringly invites us to follow. This morning early, not yet light, I woke in a state of awe; the dream, like a brilliant violet dragonfly flitted across my mind’s eye. Seductively, it came close and darted away, again and again. How I longed to name it, define it, tell it’s story, believing if I could it would be mine. But what would that accomplish, I wondered? Holding it in my hand, would it be more meaningful? Why wasn’t it enough to experience it’s color and movement, its scent of mystery, like something glimpsed through mist that comes in and out of focus?

If I did manage to catch hold of it, I would surely admire it for awhile, and eventually, believing I’d come to an understanding of its nature, I would put it down and look for something else to capture my imagination. Had I caught the dragonfly or had it caught me?

Like a dream analyzed, knowledge sought and gained leaves a brief impression on the mind, and then the fickle creature moves on.  The mind holds to the belief that the current love interest will be the final one; the one that ends the seeking. However, the mating of concept with reality is an unquenchable thirst, a hunger never sated. It is the nature of mind to seek knowledge and of knowledge to seduce with creative fluorishes of color and movement and of possibilities only dreamed of.  Like dreams in sleep that elude capture or if caught, aren’t what we’d wished for. 

Mind’s nature is to posset questions and seek their answers certain there will come one special one; one unlike all the others that will give us peace, believing if it isn’t found in life surely when the answer to that biggest question is before us, and we know what happens after death, surely then?