Love

Sometimes it seems that we spend (or I spend) a lot of time and energy looking for love, grieving lost love, and so on and so forth, when really... love is just love. It's there when you feel it. It's in the most common and unexpected places. Yes, it would be nice if you could have it in the way you want it. Usually that would be a romantic, sweep you off your feet sort of experience or a feeling completely synchronized and understood moment. The thing is that for every bit that is missing, there is some place where it exists in a different form. Yes, one day I want to have that dreamed of romantic love feeling, but just because I haven't found it yet doesn't mean there's a lack of love in my life right now.

The reason I'm writing about this is because I fall so easily. Not in love, but into a deep dark hole. Could be grief, could be depression, but it's not a nice place to land. And I find myself falling over and over and over again. Like a well practiced habit, it's become comfortable. This is something I've experienced since I was about 6 years old. Over the years, I've learned how to live with the often sudden and unannounced increased bursts of gravity that pull me down. They really do hit me quite suddenly and with great force. I am actively working against gravity and grief on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. The lists of new things to do and trying out the Artists Way and working like mad and all that. It helps. But I wonder. WHY does that downward spiral energy seem to strengthen? Shouldn't these conscious efforts to resist wear it down... eventually to nothing?

How is this connected to love? Well, as intensely as I feel all the horrible things I feel when I fall, I also feel a deep appreciation, awe and love for so many beings and blessings in my life. I feel loved and I feel love for so many. I am overwhelmed with the people and creatures in my life who make it a point to remind me just how much they love me.

So how do these two mix? How can a person feel completely encompassed with love and at the same time feel so hopeless and lost and unworthy of any love at all? Is it a chemical thing? A basic human crisis that everyone faces all the time?

I am working with an artist who recently did a collaboration with a dance company. They did a cabaret sort of show that explored the disconnect between how other people see you and how you see yourself. I got to watch a video of the performance, and it left me wondering... Are we all on this rollercoaster and we just don't realize we're sitting right next to each other?