The largeness of love

“Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it’s cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.”

- Erica Jong

On the wall in the hallway of our home is a quote by Khalil Gibran: “And think not you can guide the course of love... for love, if it finds you worthy, shall guide your course”.

Like all good romantics, I believe that the power of love can change your life. It’s something that years of heartbreak and disappointment haven’t managed to touch. Oh, after bad dates and worse nights on the town, after boys who seem to be incapable of stringing together rational thought, or worse, are completely devoid of any understanding of all emotional sensibilities, I grow weary, but at the end of the day, I always come back to this core belief: love is a force stronger than anything else.

Against my own better judgement, I’ve spent years waiting for it to arrive, waiting for this mystical One to show up on a white horse and sweep me off my feet, waiting for it to change my life, complete my life, complete me. And I’ve made youthful, foolish decisions based on my yearning for the search to be over at last.

Ex-boyfriends, ex-flings, ex-friends, I owe many of you an apology, because I think I often treated you in ways that showed how much I was looking not at you or us, but rather for a part of myself.

Earlier, I wrote about the importance of having someone who knows you really well around to tell you that they like you, that it’s important to feel understood and appreciated and above all, loved for who you are. Spending this weekend in Tassie with my sister, I realise that this has never been quite so true, nor so relevant.

I look at my sister who studies day and night to make a difference in the world, so busy and overworked she could probably have slept the whole weekend, who instead chose to spend it with me.

I think about my parents; their dear, worried little faces, cautioning me against all the woes of the world, real and imagined and gleaned from Today Tonight. Their solemn vow that they will worry from the second I leave these shores to the moment I return.

I think about Steph and her endless patience and understanding, the kilos of nachos and pho we’ve consumed as I’ve cried, laughed and loved my way through my twenties. I can almost see the pom poms as she cheers me onto the next phase of my life, even though every cartwheel she turns must hurt her terribly since she knows it will take me further away from her.

Kate and her no-nonsense, pragmatic take on the world, her unending belief that I am better than I believe myself to be. Sul’s kind support, encouraging me to search for who I can be.

I guess I’m coming a little late to the party, but it never really occurred to me that love has already shown up in my life and is guiding my course every day. Did I miss it because the white charger was actually a large people-mover? Did I miss it because, unlike romantic love, it didn’t take me to dizzying heights and crushing depths but rather supported me endlessly through hard times and good? It sounds like a terrible line from a cheap self-help book, but I look at the stable, eternal and unconditional love that already surrounds me, and it gives me the courage to believe that I am lovable.

Someday, when I’m good and ready, that other kind of love will show up, and there’ll be no escaping it. The largeness of love will overcome every obstacle, every petty difficulty, every perceived incompatibility with its warm-hearted embrace. I still believe that. In the meantime, love proves daily that it is and always will remain the most powerful force in the world.

And I am superbly content.