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I mean that not as a noun, not even as a verb, but as a command.  photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls Or, more poignantly, as a simple instruction for life. As a game plan with only one play. A game plan that should be tattooed, not taped, to your wrist. Love is simple. We confuse and distract ourselves with hundreds of strategies for happiness, for success, for control, for security, for life. When the answer is simple. Albeit, counter-intuitive. In our defense, this is probably because, while this one-word-directive may seem simple, somehow it is not. The reasons why are probably fodder for at least twelve months of essays, all by themselves. But I think it is mostly because we are fearful beings. No matter what we say or how we act. Love is dangerous. No matter the bravado. No matter the hours at the gym, the tattoos, the sexy clothes, the cadre of friends, the cool job, or the hipness of our hangouts. No matter the number of times we read these words, study them in books, pay teachers to tell us, repeat them in mantras, stack the pillows, clear our minds, burn the right incense. No matter our friend counts, the notches on the bedpost or the numbers in the bank. No matter our previous revelations. Love remembers. We forget. We lose faith. We doubt. We disbelieve. We call past successes flukes and focus only on failure. We begin again our strategies for survival. Yes, survival. We decide that all else is fool-hearted frivolity. That we need to spend less time watching the stars and more time watching our backs. We fall back into fear. Because fear is easy. Fear comforts us as it tell us lies. Fear gets our back, it says. Protects our hearts, it assures. Leads us not into temptation. Not to cliffs and falls. Fear teaches us lessons in letting ourselves be too free. Lest we forget again. Lest we let our hearts hold the reins again. Lest we lose our way. Again. Love knows the truth. And the truth is not easy. The truth is not simple. Not courteous or kind. The truth is blinding in its beatitudes. Ruthless in its revelations. And above all, breathtaking in its beauty. And beauty, well, you know what that is. Love is beauty. In all its shapes and sizes. In all its gifts and grandeur. In its bliss and its barely believableness. In its understatement and its overwhelm. In its cruelty and its crystalline clarity. In its ability to break your heart and to save your life. With one swift stroke. Yes, it is true. The answer is simple. It is taking our own advice that is hard. Even as I write this, I must remind myself that it is true. Because I’m no different from you. And you’re no different from her or him. Which leads us back to the reason there is only one rule. Love is everywhere. Yes, I mean literally everywhere. As in not figuratively. As in you need only reach out and your fingers will touch it. As in take a step forward and you can’t help but bump into it. As in open your mouth and some of it will come out. As in open your heart and some of it can’t help but spill inside. And so why aren’t we all just constantly swimming around in blissful revelations of beauty and self-awareness and fulfillment? Well, because. Love is complicated. Or as I’ve said, love breaks all rules / ignores all customs / cuts through fences / slips across front lines / trespasses against us / steals what it pleases / pleases its victims / slays its critics / bleeds us to delirium / and saves our souls. No matter the cost. (from love: study 1, Waking Up at Rembrandt's) Sometimes this simple directive to love is hard to follow, sometimes it’s easy. But whatever action you take, if you do it with your heart open, that is enough. That will change the results. It will change your reaction. And it will change your experience. Of yourself. Of others. Of your whole damn life. Love takes many shapes. Love is not being foolish or naive, not shirking from who you are, not being afraid to use your voice. Love is showing up, reaching out, standing in your gifts, sharing your vision, connecting, being open. And as you probably already know, doing these things is both wonderful and terrifying. In the end, there is only love. Because in the beginning there is only love. So giving the instruction is simple. And yes, acting on it takes a little more. A little more courage. A little more faith. A little better memory. A little thicker skin. But in the end, what is required is the willingness to let love have its way with you. Or as Mr. Kravitz so artfully taught us. Let love rule. * * * This is one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Subscribe to Substack for more fun with words: https://thomaslloydqualls.substack.com/
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You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. - Albert Camus  photo credit: Thomas Lloyd Qualls I know what you’re doing. You’re out there turning over stones in search of some deeper meaning to your existence. And when you do, you’re going to find some things: moss, algae, bugs, discarded exoskeletons. Your toes are going to sink into the mud. And you’re going to get wet. You’re going to feel the stream’s current on your calves. And you’ll probably discover some other hidden treasures you never expected. What you will not find are any engraved explanations, no statements of empirical meaning, no one-size-fits-all answers. That’s because life is not some big game of hide and seek, where the gods have written down the correct answers under certain stones, and the only game is for you to look in the right places. Though, come to think of it, that would make a good story. Let me be clear, I do believe in living a life filled with turning over stones. And if you enjoy playing in rivers and creeks, hunting fairies, and searching for mayflies, then you should continue to do just that. There are treasures to be found everywhere. But just as the beauty beheld depends upon the eyes that seek it out, your life’s meaning lies in the joys of your own experience. Do we find meaning or does it find us? Let me say that another way. The meaning of life is not hiding out there somewhere, waiting to be found. Life has whatever meaning we attach to it. Whatever meaning we imagine for ourselves. More simply, we do not find meaning; we create it. And when we stop creating meaning, we quickly get lost. And then, though we are in search of meaning, somehow we end up looking for ourselves. And we don’t realize that now we are two steps away from the answer. And when we begin to feel better, it isn’t because we have found ourselves, or our way home, or even discovered the elusive meaning we sought. It is because we have assigned some meaning to our present experience. Randomly or not. Of our own design or someone else’s. What does it mean to mean? What does it mean for something to have meaning? How do we know when anything is meaningful? Too often, we believe it is when another person, religion, institution, television show, or cereal box tells us it does. But this adopted meaning often doesn’t ring true. Meanings are a lot like fingerprints. Consider a rose. To a photographer, the meaning of the rose is its vibrant color. To a sculptor, its texture. To the blind, its smell. To a lover, its symbol of affection. To a gardener, its reflection of success. To a bee, the sustenance it provides. These are each true and meaningful aspects of a rose. And yet, no one could ever say that any of these was the one true meaning of a rose. It is also why it cannot be said that anything is inherently meaningless. You can do this with almost anything. Take a songbird. I may see waking up to bird songs at dawn as the Universe giving me the best gift it can imagine to start my day. You may grab a pillow and wonder why in the world you’ve been cursed by the gods. When the gelato café moves in next door to your workplace, you may celebrate it as proof that you are, in fact, the chosen one of the goddess. Where your best friend may view it as yet another obstacle to a happy bikini season. What do you mean by create? Isn’t that like making it up? Are you saying we are just making up things about life so we’ll feel better? Well, yes, in a way. But more than that, I’m saying that the meaning of life is not set. It is not some fixed, static thing. Otherwise you could just look it up in the dictionary and move on. We live in an interactive universe. The meaning of anything in life is not separate from you. We all create our lives, and their meanings. Everyday. All day long. Life is not a board game and we are not game pieces. When a painter paints a picture, everyone agrees that the painter has created something. But the act of creation is not limited to art. It is spread across all aspects of our lives. Your life’s meaning is no different. You are constantly deciding what is meaningful. Consciously create. We are unconscious of most of the assignments of meaning in our lives. Often because we’ve mindlessly adopted someone else’s decisions. But we can change that. We can be mindful of the unique fingerprints of our own world of meaning. And we can do it in a way that keeps us awake. And we can do that moment by moment. I think what Camus meant was to get out of your head. Because the meaning of life is not there. It’s in your life. Live your life fully and find your own meanings in the living. * * * This is one of 66 essays in the Gold Nautilus Award winning collection, Happiness Is an Imaginary Line in the Sand. The book is available here: https://bit.ly/40s3Gh0 Subscribe to Substack for more fun with words: https://thomaslloydqualls.substack.com/ |
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