Gardeners and Heros

I have had a lot of deep and enduring love from friends and family. I've had a lot of sexy romance in my life, too. I am extremely lucky. As a friend said to me the other day, "There are so many people in this world who wait in vain to be noticed, who have craved sex and love for years, even lifetimes, with only memories of a kiss or two to sustain them. Some without even that. You and I are lucky because someone, some time, chose us." He is right.

Even if after age 34 there isn't any more for me, I know this won't be one of my top five deathbed lamentations: "I wish I had made crazy intense sex more of a priority in my life." I have gone very far out of my way already to have this kind of excitement. At the expense of many other things I have missed few occasions to pursue loves that involved major obstacles, distances of various kinds--owing to geography, age difference, emotional unavailability, deception, inconsistency, addictions--that regularly inflamed my emotions to a very high and exhilarating, if often excruciating, pitch. A lot of incredible sex can come out of this. But many quieter, more modest, more essential and healthy elements have too often been missing from my relationships.

These are some of the things I have been thinking about as I feel my loneliness, my broken heart, and as I wonder about future love.

I have been thinking about something an artist and dear love of mine, Mariko, wrote. She painted for me a birthday card with a dead cow lying on its back, a bird flying overhead, and two bleeding horses eating grass side by side out in a field under a very bright sun. Everywhere in the picture there is both life and death. Above these creatures are the words: "Love feels like a Sunday afternoon spent grazing, doesn't it?"

Yes it does. Except when our own or a beloved's survival is imminently threatened, true love doesn't feel fierce and grasping. It is calm. It doesn't need to shove or rush. It is not temporal. It is comfortable to give and recieve this love.

In contrast, romantic love, the most exciting but most shallow and fleeting of loves, is about flattering narratives and racing pulses. It is heady and capricious. Above all it is about the thrill of egos feeding each other. It is about for a time seeing the best of what you wish to be reflected in the eyes of another. It is about editing out the messy straggly edges of yourself and your beloved so you can shoehorn your complicated and sometimes ugly lives and selves into a perfect vignette that is at once extremely personal and banal. A romantic lover asks of his object, "What can I do for you that will make me a hero in my own eyes?"

True love--the love of friends, brothers, mothers, and couples that are to last--doesn't often ask egoistic questions. Because more strong and stable, this love need not be so preening, anxious, and self-conscious. It tends to call for practical things that will, over time, serve each of the beloveds in equal measure. If one person bends for their beloved it is with the confidence and understanding that, naturally, this kindness will be returned at a later time; that when one in a pair helps and makes room for the other this enhances and deepens the relationship which will then be robust enough to provide support to both people further into the future. You know you are feeling this kind of love when you are moved to do something useful or comforting for someone without keeping score, without craving recognition. When, without thought of when you will next be served or humiliated, you want to go out of your way to let someone know, "I am with you in this life."