Love in the dark

What is it about the heart that we need to walk in the dark like mad men instead of being able to choose who and how we love?. Why is it so difficult to let go or to let someone in?. It’s crazy if you ask me. 

I’m young still, 27 years old, and experimenting with love ever since junior high. I had one girlfriend and a few boyfriends. Longest continuos relationship of about 6 months; shortest of almost a week. I’ve loved a few people deeply, not like in romantic-comedy way, but deeply enough to care about them years after we were finished and still think of them every now and then. Some were good to me, some were not. But one thing is certain, i learnt a great deal of each and every one of them. 

Sometimes i learnt about myself: my limits, the things that made me tick, the ones that made me smile and the vices that haunted my spirit and could collapse those relationships from within. Another times i learnt about people: how they can feel, how they act under certain circumstances, how good or bad they can act towards you disregarding the actual quality of spirit they have. For life is complicated, some of us have the strength to do the right thing, others find escape in doing all the wrong ones. There’s good actions and bad, then there’s people. In the long run actions can define character, but they have to persist. One great bad action, or one great good one is still too far a stretch to define someone’s character. Luckily we usually have lives long enough to find redemption for our sins if that is what we choose. 

There’s a big difference right there between people considered good and bad. Some can realize the pain, suffering they caused, some want to correct that; others feel they thrive in that same suffering and pain. Usually to quiet their own pain inside. When i think of the good and bad things that happen to me i usually forget how most things we do derive from our own experience, the wish to do this or that comes mostly from our own set of values and mechanisms of incentives: positive and negative. 

Even the way we love comes from precise moments in our life. I once heard that the trick to finding one’s soul mate is to find someone whose particular vices and problems were compatible with yours. I would go a bit further and add that along the vices and problems once should also find someone whose virtues and answers are also compatible to ours. We cannot deny the darkness in every single one of us, sometimes you see it, sometimes you don’t. But it’s there, it’s constantly there in all of us, waiting to be fed, waiting to be unleashed if you let it thrive. Also, we cannot deny the light in all of us, we have it, comes pre-programmed in our genetic code, in our will to live and reproduce and  be happy. Both of them are necessary for the human experience, even if only to realize the things you want and the ones you don’t. 

Even if we can’t control who we love and who we don’t we do have the power of free will. You can choose to answer that call or email; you can also choose to ignore it and move on. Time has the power to erase and transform the deepest of feelings into memories you can keep on living with. That’s one of the wonders of the human condition, the ability to move forward, to continue living even if at one point we thought it would be impossible. If you let yourself do it, you can pretty much get used to the worst situations in life. To this the death of my father comes to mind, such an intense loss, with no unfinished business but still a profound sadness i thought i was never going to be free from and here i am, moving forward, still sad at times but  not enough to paralyze the rest of my future. The same goes for relationships, everything passes. With no regard for the good and bad. Only memories remain, we get to decide which ones we keep: the one that made us happy or the ones that made us angry, sad. 

Sometimes seeing potential in someone and enough will to achieve it is reason enough to stay; on the other hand not seeing any of them is also a reason enough to leave. My best guess is we should keep those who add up to our lives close, and of course drop the ones that are just leeching out on you. Adding or leeching have nothing to do with the quality of person someone is, it is just a matter of their particular circumstance, their own experience and the way they handle those experiences. More than that, it’s important to note that each and every one of us has the right of choice. We can, and we must, filter out what kind of people we need around to make us a better person, to help us achieve our goals, to be happy together with. 

This is my final thought on the matter: the choices we make, the actions we take, and the people we keep close are all cornerstones of the process to achieve happiness, we should be very careful with each of them. No one else has the right to make those decisions for you, no one.