Being good at love is a decision.

Sometimes I think that a higher power is trying to talk to me via the Internet. Or maybe Google is the new God. After my social media cleanse I am back to dabbling and it is a waste of my fucking time. Facebook trying to tell me that attachment and love are different, well it must be true if a Buddhist monk said it and it was shared on the Internet to hint at something inside me that questions what makes the love connection between any two people special. Apt timing or fate? Or message from God? I don’t think saints could survive this modern age.

If we practice love in the ‘purest’ form, that is from a place of detachment where it needs to come from release- letting go of ego and expectation, in theory we should be able to love anyone and anything. So maybe all those great romance novels were wrong or the authors just weren’t exposed to enough TED talks. Progress is pain.

I believe in fate like I believe in horoscopes. There is nothing left inside me to suggest that living is nothing but a series of lessons that we are born to endure. I have lost faith. I had a discussion with one of my friends about legacy/destiny/fate and man’s ego. We are destined to be forgotten, man strives to create his mark in this world to rage against his insignificance. Go down fighting champ, you are special. But who is it we actually remember? Jesus Christ. Not swearing. This is my example. Jesus Christ and even then he is a semblance of a myth. The ideal of remembrance is a false idol. Jesus is 2018 years old, in the scheme of the millennia of the planet that is nothing. And we cannot even separate what he represents into the truths of what he was (if you even acknowledge that he is). Your identity itself will be consumed and rebirthed until it is a mere shadow of what you may or may not have intended. Perhaps this is why authors deign to speak, a narcissistic stab at being understood by more than oneself. My friend made a very interesting comment to me that Jesus Christ is a brand, like Coca-Cola. Agree. And it disheartens me (not in a Catholic sense) but in a way that we cannot understand anything. And we are selfish and that selfishness leads to consumption of everything around us. The process of understanding itself is consumption and if you consume something it ceases to exist as an entity representative of itself. You are destroying its essence in your quest to understand it. What a crazy world to live in that the compulsion we seek to understand is the thing that destroys us. It’s just like everything really. Out to get you. You know what else is depressing? That Coca-Cola the brand will most likely outlive the legacy of flesh and bone human being.

Does that make love real? I used to be in love with my first great love because I felt he ‘understood’ me. Mistake the first. We can never understand another person and in the isolation of self, here we are trying to love each other. As we live and breathe we are creating the myth of our existence, a false legacy beyond our control. Even if you do alter the world in a significant manner once you are dead it is out of your control. Your image is no longer yours to keep. Will you be history’s hero or villain? That is even if you manage to make it on the page. Hell, even if you are living it is out of your control. What is celebrity but representation/misrepresentation?

I don’t understand human connection. And if love is a concept that encompasses not only understanding one’s self but practicing it through positive action, then what’s the point? Amorous love is stupid. It’s not real. Why are we compelled to love one person and not another if the capacity to love in an authentic way levels the playing field. I said it: love isn’t special. It’s not special if you can love anyone if you know ‘how’ to love. Is this what marriage is? That’s fucking depressing. As a love addict this is all news to me. Does anyone else care what it means to love? Feelings are hard.

xx SJ