Month: February 2018

“Where passion is not found, no virtue ever dwelt.” ~Maria Brooks; Canto First, Grove of Acadias in 1825

Oh, but what is love without passion?

A night without stars and the moon.

A storm of winds without the rain.

A kiss without feeling.

Can it be considered love without passion? A presence without want and need of each other is merely coexisting. That is no way to live.

It is an incomplete song.

It is an unfinished book.

It is a betrayal of one’s own heart.

For you see, we are driven by our emotions and must not refrain from expressing how we feel for one another. Where there is passion there is a desire to manifest the affections we have for the person we love.

Be it with a kiss, a caress, a whisper of our intentions when we pull each other close and our bodies become one.

We are incapable of avoiding this when we are in love, for love is the fire that burns in the hearth of our hearts and passion is the accelerant that intensifies the heat. The heat capable of providing us with warmth in an uncertain world. Its glow capable of illuminating the darkest corners of our souls. The blaze capable of consuming us, together…leaving us in a pile of ashes and dust.

We no longer exist as we once did, but instead we emerge like a phoenix reborn, two souls having become one. When we do this repeatedly with the same person it is akin to the adage that speaks of successful marriages being predicated on the idea that it requires us to fall in love many times, always with the same person.

Thus, it is incumbent upon us to honor ourselves and our partners by fulfilling the promises made in our hearts: to love each other unconditionally because that’s what true love is, that’s what it’s meant to be…passionate and virtuous, a fire and the breath it needs to exist.

“Maybe that’s what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try news things but still makes you feel safe.” ~Wally Lamb, We Are Water

What is love if not an invitation to live life to the fullest?

For if writing is like driving at night in the fog and you can only see as far as your headlights, then falling in love is akin to walking in the dark. Only you aren’t doing it alone. Instead, you hold hands with someone else.

Whether it is someone you just met, or someone whom you’ve known but never truly knew you decide to embark on this journey together. You are to each other: the blind leading the blind.

Your blindness is more than seeing past each other’s flaws. It’s understanding that you don’t know where you are going, but trusting that you’ll get to where you need to be together.

In a world that tries to make you forget who you are by telling you who you should be, you find in each other someone who reminds you to simply be yourself.

Liberated from the shackles of society you embark on this path with nothing but your faith in each other. Perhaps, even with your faith in God.

The ebb and flow of love: the uncertainty one minute and the confidence to conquer the world in the next, the depths of despair and the heights of passion, the silence between heartbeats and the thunder of emotions are but the natural progression of what it means to live your life with another, for another, until you recognize in each other what you’d always seen in yourself.

You provide each other with those missing pieces, or you merely reveal them as they existed, but often went overlooked. And that provides you both with the confidence to move forward together.

Holding hands, holding hearts, holding each other the way one holds their breath before that first kiss. Thought it may never be difficult to convince a romantic to fall in love, it may prove a bit more challenging to lure the heartbroken from the shadows of sadness.

When you do, it is imperative that you hold their hand like you’ll never let go. Even if you don’t know where you’re headed you must understand that someone has placed their trust in you.

When it is love, the trust is implicit.

Regardless of the unpredictability of life, the fragility of it is as delicate as a broken heart. Once healed it will be stronger than before, and if it has been entrusted to you then you must handle it with the same care you would handle your own.

After all, it is yours now. Make a life with it. Live that life to the fullest. Because you aren’t doing it alone.

You’re wandering through the darkness together.

Imagine the light you will create to begin a new day, because the night is always darkest just before dawn.

“Passion is the quickest to develop, and the quickest to fade. Intimacy develops more slowly, and commitment more gradually still.” ~Robert Sternberg

I spoke with God today.

I speak with Him daily.

I didn’t expect to, but circumstances required correspondence.

Whether it was He who needed to speak with me, or I who needed to speak with Him, I cannot say. I won’t dare to speculate the origins of requirement, but I will say I’m grateful for the opportunity to reconnect with a father I had once turned away from.

Not a decision made out of anger or spite, but rather choice I made as I endeavored to seek understanding.

Understanding of what, though?

That’s the conundrum of the ages.

In my case, I sought logic.

In His case, He sought nothing.

This is parental love.

Unconditional.

Unrelenting.

Unwavering.

My dad once said, “When you have children of your own, you will one day understand the love a parent has for his children.”

He was correct.

There is nothing I wouldn’t forgive of my children. Sure, I may be upset with academic performance that isn’t up to par, but always I will love them.

I’ll hold them accountable for their behavior, but I’ll guide them along the way to greater understanding.

This is love.

This is parental love.

And as I navigate the troubled waters of life, I realize that this is how I am being held accountable and guided through life by a Father whose love is unconditional and unwavering.

And as every child will trust his or her father—more often than not, a daughter will revere her father more than the son will revere him—at the end of the day, it all comes down to trust.

We trust our parents.

We trust our God.

Divergent faiths aside, our faith remains unwavering.

And as such, our Father’s love remains as unconditional as promised in Scripture.

To that end, I reflect on my life.

The path that led me to the now.

The lost loves, the almost was, the could have been that never came to be are all instances where God knew better than I thought I knew.

And when I decided to pray, and ask Him to lead me along a path toward my epic love, my happiness, my fate… I relinquished all control to His will.

I’d never done that before today.

It just didn’t seem logical.

But when I did, I found a myriad of blessings that surpassed my expectations—if one is permitted to have any expectations about happiness and love—and I went with it.

My tears made a sea, and my sea led me to a horizon.

A horizon where the moon kisses the ocean with a silence and gentle caress that even heaven cannot mimic. And if it’s true that there’s a difference between a love of your life and a once in a lifetime love, I believe it now.

I’ll swim without giving up hope of finding her shore.

I’ll wait until she finds me in the darkness.

I’ll remain where she needs me until the day she leaves.

This is love.

Unconditional.

Unrelenting.

Unwavering.

And when the day comes that she looks back on the way that I loved her, she’ll know I loved her all the way.

I loved her until it broke my heart and her name spilled out onto the canvas of her life.

What better way to love than the way God intended?

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

Moving on is never easy. It is a process. A process we must experience, endure, and learn from as we continue along our journey.

In truth, the destination is death, but that end should hopefully lie in some far away time and place where the circumstances are determined by fate and not by our hand.

Having said that, it is imperative that we make the most of our journey. If we don’t know what we want out of life, we must endeavor to figure that out for ourselves. Upon doing so, we must seek it out. When we do, we must make the most of it, because the reality of life is that not everyone is granted the privilege of growing old.

Aging, in and of itself, is a process. Maturing from one phase of our existence to another is also a process. Everything in life is a process…and that includes healing.

Regardless of what it is you are enduring, don’t rush it.

Everything happens in its own time. Simply trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be at this precise moment. Einstein once said: “God does not roll dice with the universe.”

To that end, you must know there is no such thing as coincidences.

When you fall in love, that is not a choice. It happens as it’s intended to occur. When you face heartbreak, that too is beyond your control.

When you heal, it happens in its own time. You simply must surrender yourself to it.

Lose yourself in it, for in doing so, you will find something new about yourself. You will either forgive and forget, or you will recover and remember. Either way, you will live. You must live. Otherwise, what’s the point?

You’re still here.

Your journey has not concluded.

Fill the seconds of your life with grateful breaths, and use those breaths to whisper something sweet.

When your heart breaks, let it all out. All of it. The pain. The grief. The sadness.

Don’t rush to heal your heart, for it will be during that stage of healing that something good will slip inside.

“Maybe I’m too late to be your first. But right now I’m preparing myself to be your last.” ~Mr. Sid

We concern ourselves with the place we hold in the lives of the people we love. Men often seek to be a woman’s first love. Women may reflect on the memory of their first kiss.

There’s an innocence to the preambles of love. Our first steps along a journey that will define our lives. Though we cannot see beyond the scope of the now, we often envision the details of the future that we hope to share with the one we love.

It may seem a though we are living for tomorrow, but in doing so, we are only living in the tomorrow while failing to live in the now. Count not the seconds that approach, and count not the seconds that have passed. Instead, fill each second of your life with love!

I promise you, there will be no regrets.

When you hold each other as though you’re saying goodbye, you never want to let go. When you kiss each other as if it was the first time, and as if it was the last, you’ll savor the taste of affection…the exchanging of souls.

Make the most of the minutes before they have passed, because time is the one thing you think you have enough of, but will never get back.

Memories are for the winters of our lives.

But to have them, we must make them.

Anything can change in the blink of an eye. A voice can become an echo that vanishes like the wisp of smoke, but a whisper of love in the moment will echo through eternity.

When you find yourself dreaming while you’re awake, you’ll discover that you’re in love. When you’re in love, you place the fancy of your heart first, and they in-turn do the same for you. Together, you guide each other into tomorrow, side-by-side, hand-in-hand, heart-to-heart, and though you may not have been each other’s first kiss, or first love…what matters most is that you’re first in each other’s hearts now.

Don’t take each other for granted.

Love each other like you’re going to lose each other and you’ll find yourself holding on for dear life.

Life is fragile.

Life is now.

Life is love.

So, when you fall in love delve into it like it’s the last thing you’ll ever do, for there is no greater feeling than being in love and knowing that someone else is in love with you too!

Madly.

Truly.

Deeply.

Does it matter then that you weren’t each other’s first?

“Beauty awakens the soul to act.” ~Dante Alighieri

What is beauty?

Is it the absence of the hideous and grotesque?

The conundrum with that definition is that what is perceived as beastly to one may be considered lovely to another.

Thus, making the concepts of beauty and the unattractive subjective rather than definitive.

Which begs the question again: What is beauty?

Is beauty the perfect pain?

The immaculate ache in our hearts that defines true love. The sorrow in our shadows that looms like a cloud. Yet, even the rain is beautiful in the absence of the sun.

The perfect storm of our emotions when the cool air collides with a warm breeze.

In that regard, pain can save us.

It will cleanse us of what we know to prepare us for what we need.

Love.

Love is an ache of a different sort, for in it we ache for more of it. Akin to tasting raindrops on our lips in the desert.

Parched, we realize we need more. We want more. We crave more.

We long for that next drop.

We wait for it—eyes wide shut—heads tilted to the sky waiting patiently for another kiss from heaven.

It comes crashing down, but it misses us, and we step forward in anticipation of the next kiss, the next caress, the next blessing. The more we move forward, the more distance we create between our past and our future.

We pursue the taste of bliss without looking forward and without looking back.

Before we know it, we have ventured miles into the unknown savoring every moment of the now for that beautiful feeling we experience.

The more we have of it, the more we crave it, until it becomes all we know and all we love. Then we realize we have been lured out of the desert by chasing a storm.

That storm is passion.

That storm is raging.

The storm is perfect.

The warm breeze of our breath collides with the cool scent of the rain and brings us comfort. Suddenly, we find ourselves enveloped in the eye of the storm. The madness that surrounds us is everything that entails love.

A new storm of emotions.

One that is both terrifying and comforting all at once.

As with love, no two storms are ever the same.

From a distance, they may resemble each other, but up close and personal each experience is unique. Each relationship is its own storm.

Seek it.

Find it.

Live it.

In a world where nothing is guaranteed, I can promise you this: She is beautiful. She is passionate. She is not the storm you run from, but rather she is the storm you chase after.

She is the one whose essence inspires you to act.

“There is no greater sorrow than to recall a happy time when miserable.” ~Dante Alighieri

The strangest things happen in doorways. On the threshold from one place to the next, be it an entrance into a home, or the place where warm waters of the sea push against the cold waters of the ocean, or where the past meets the future, anything will happen.

Perhaps you will enter, or maybe you will exit.

In the oceans of time, you linger in the familiar waters of the past as if waiting on the edge of time and reason to move into the future. The fear of the unknown and the unforeseen leaves us with the feeling of anxiety, and so we remain apprehensive about venturing into unfamiliar waters.

But what purpose does it serve to live in the past and fear the future when the sadness of the present consumes us?

Indeed, you will find comfort in the memories of what once was, but that is only a temporary solution. Akin to consuming alcohol to drown your troubles. The reprieve will only last as long as the moment, but it cannot carry you through life.

It will merely serve to distract you from it.

That is no way to live.

That is no way to love.

And find love again, you will, because it is as the adage goes: “Everything you have ever hoped for lies on the other side of fear.”

Be not afraid of what may or may not happen for that fear will merely be a fire that will consume your hopes and dreams. Fear, instead, that you will miss out on the greatest blessings of your life, and let that fire comfort you, warm you, and illuminate your path.

And regret not the past for what it was and what it wasn’t. Be grateful for what it was and what it wasn’t, because to only reflect on the good in lieu of living your life, is to cling to the final thread of a quilt that has come undone. In its present form, it cannot bring you comfort. It will only accentuate your misery, and that is the greatest sorrow of all.

But when you live one day at a time with the hope of what will be, you open yourself to the possibilities of a happier time that will shine with such brightness that it will push away the shadows of sorrow.

“The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.” ~Dante Alighieri

In my novel, THE LAST VALENTINE, I wrote that love is not measured by a beginning and an end, but rather by the height of its passion and the depth of its sorrow.

I believe that, because there are those who spend close to a lifetime together, but those years are filled with regret while absent of faithful affections. Whereas there are others who share a few short years together and the affair is driven by passionate, romantic love.

Isn’t that the ideal love?

The kind that fills your heart with so much affection that it breaks it. You never truly recover from it. The break never heals. It leaves a scar. The memory of it stays with you.

I think of this love as an epic love.

You fly and you fall to the ebb and flow of its motion. You live and die by the moment. Some may claim this is an unhealthy form of love, but isn’t love intended to take you through every emotion?

Happiness, sadness, laughter, tears, joy, pain, bliss, anger, security and jealousy are the gamut of feelings you run through the course of this love…and in truth, the only regret you will ever feel is the loss of this love.

You will grieve the loss till the end of your days.

Not for what it was, but for what it wasn’t.

The love that didn’t last.

So, we must ask ourselves: Why doesn’t this love last?

What leads us to walk away from it?

What happened during the course of that love to place us on divergent paths?

Pride? Anger? Pain? Infidelity? Deception?

Or did it simply exhaust us of our patience?

Perhaps it is a combination of the aforementioned reasons, but if this is so, then what do we make of 1st Corinthians 13:7 – “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things,” when we claim to be adherents of the Bible, and believers in God?

Though Scripture teaches us about God’s perfect love for us, I dare say that love is most closely paralleled by our unconditional love for each other.

So, forgive your lover’s imperfections, lest you deny your own faults; believe that your lover loves you as deeply as you love in-turn, lest you live your life wondering what could have been; and endure the highs and lows of the love you share, lest you forego the elixir of true love and remain parched for the real thing.

This is what makes epic love the perfect love.

“The heart was made to be broken.” ~Oscar Wilde

What defines a romantic?

Is it the love, the lover, or heartbreak?

The first, defines our lives, for in it we feel alive. The second, defines our reason for living. The last, however, teaches us how to live.

Love, in essence is the soul of the universe. It is the moon and the stars and the worlds we inhabit. It is both the greatest distance that separates us for the purpose of making the effort of coming together, the infinitesimal things we do for one another that matter most.

A simple kiss on the forehead, an embrace in the middle of the night, and the whisper that has us floating on cloud nine. Love is loving despite being separated by time, or circumstance, or emotions, but not letting that stand in the way of expression.

The lover, in essence is the presence that makes up our universe. Be it the galaxy that contains our very existence, to the comets that wander aimlessly—though not aimless, at all—across our night skies, and inspire us to wonder in awe at how something so beautiful could exist amid the chaos.

The heartbreak, in truth is the black hole that robs us of our existence. Its pull is inescapable, for not even light can survive within its grasp. Absolute. Unrelenting. Endless.

It lies at the center of all galaxies biding its time until it devours the moon and the stars and the worlds that comprise our existence. There are wandering black holes too, that belong to no one but fate.

What becomes of the universe then?

Is it reborn in another dimension?

Does it re-emerge, changed, as another universe?

Or does it lose a piece of itself to become a parallel universe?

This is the romantic.

The romantic, who becomes the moon and the stars for another. The romantic, who exists to be the galaxies and worlds of another. And when the romantic arrives at the event horizon, incapable of defying destiny, he has no alternative but to surrender to heartbreak.

Destroyed.

Gone.

Reborn.

Changed.

The inevitability of it defines us, and redefines us throughout the course of our lives. It is in this cycle of creation, existence, and rebirth that we are fractured and become parallel universes within ourselves.

Time has no meaning, and as a consequence has no limitations, which allows us to relive the memories of our previous existence without abandoning our current state of mind.

Though we must be careful not to live in the past, because in doing so, we may miss out on the present.

Walk your path.

Let your heart beat.

Let your heart be broken.

You were born to live, and the best way to do that is to feel alive.