In my recent Valentine’s Day conversation with AG Billig on mystar95.com, we talked about the difference between ‘Love’ and ‘In-Love’. It’s a nuanced take and I admit to being entranced by nuance. This quote always comes to mind when I consider the tiny differences in life:
It’s the silence between the notes that makes the music. It’s the spaces between the bars that hold the tiger
These words are from Jacob the Baker by Noah Ben Shea. They remind me that it’s in the nuance where the truest meanings resonate in life. I cannot speak for all hearts, but this is certainly true of mine. I find that the broad brush-strokes with which we’re encouraged to view the world, distract from the intricate details of life. The intimate moments that make up the beauty, magic and wonder of the truest kinds of love. Do we lose the moment a lover brushed a strand of hair from our eyes, in the ‘bigness’ of forgetting an anniversary? Are we allowing these markers to be dictated by outside influences, rather than deciding, between us, what truly moves our hearts?
It is so very difficult to know what you truly want in your heart – and holding true to that desire in the face of all that we are told to want feels like a the sort of quest form which a hero may never return. It is possible to let something beautiful slip away just because we are blinded by the glare of other opinions and dictates. Not just from friends and close acquaintance, but from the very power structures that exist all around us. We're 'told' what love is, how it's supposed to be, and generally discouraged from trusting our own instincts in this analysis but can one person's experience of love truly be defined by another? Whether it can or not, I doubt very much that it can be quantified by algorithms and monetised by corporate cashboxes. This may be a representation we've been conditioned to believe shows 'us in love', but does it feel like Love? Does it move us where it counts? In our hearts, in our spirits, in our deep-down-dark soul?
We all know there is an external world we share with ‘everyone else’, and an internal one we may never share with anyone. At least not without the greatest of care and the most intimate indicators of trust. But if we do, if we can show this inner place to another soul, well…that’s powerful. That’s beautiful. That’s Love, isn’t it?