We want to fall in love because it's a preview of what is available to us at all times. It's what lures us into the potential that goes beyond the gates of other humans, where unconditionality exists.
You know how when you're first falling in love, it doesn't matter? The shitty job doesn't matter, the five extra pounds, the bitchy clerk, the dishes in the sink... Things magically alleviate—anxiety, the feeling of not being or having enough, the self-scrutiny, the irritation, and the fatigue. If only for a moment, this love breaks the mind free.
Most of us approach love as a sedative, when in fact it's a call to wake up. What we often call love is a good nap with company, a way to avoid our life without having to feel lonely, where two minds can agree to be only half-aware together. The way most people say "I love you" is by saying I'll be half the person I was before we got together.
I've done this—delivered what I thought was love but was really just offering what I wanted to give, not what was actually needed. It's easier to give a one-size-fits-all love than to pay the kind of stroke-by-stroke attention that true love demands. True love takes into consideration the locked doors and blind alleys of another person's soul, and instead of ignoring their existence or getting angry that we can't find the keys to get in, makes it our vocation to learn the individual, unique quirks and gifts of that person.
True love is a stealth act. How do we love someone with a fierce soldier's heart who protects everyone else but has never learned to let down their guard? How do we sneak love into a person whose outstretched hand is unknowingly holding people at bay? These questions have haunted and guided my own attempts at loving—this recognition that real love requires a moment-by-moment engaged attention that our culture often deems too high-maintenance.
Yet when we liberate something that has been caged, a pure line of devotion opens. More importantly, we become the person we have always wanted to be in the process of developing the attention needed to ensure our loved ones are genuinely loved.
Romance and relationship are not bad. They are, though, finite. Don't settle for the trailer when you can see the whole movie, with 3D glasses where the added dimension is the dimension of love.
The promise of love is that this state can move to a non-localized stage that requires no object. You become in love with love itself, and it, with you. True love inspires us to greatness for our beloved, ourselves, and the world around us—not as a sedative to numb us, but as the very force that calls us into our fullest aliveness.