Love = Power

      They say that there is one word that will free us from the pain and despair of this world and that word is love.

     Love…that small four letter word has the power to lift the darkness and fear that seems to have encompassed the world? When I look at couples in love (and I mean real love: can’t eat can’t sleep, out of the park home run kind of love, not the oh we both like the same music and movies we make out all the time kind of love; that is if you can call that love at all) a part of me starts to believe that maybe love does have that kind of power. One can see this power in the look that is passed between two souls that everyone just knows are meant to be together, in the way that a frail old man still gallantly hobbles ahead of his equally frail wife to hold open her door for her just like he has done their whole relationship, in the way a brand new father looks at his wife after she has given birth to their very first child or in the first shy glances exchanged between two people who are about to embark on their own wonderfully beautiful love story. This power has carried human beings through the deepest valleys of sorrow and the highest highs of joy since the beginning. The ancient Greeks believed that human beings were first born with four arms, four legs, two heads and two hearts. But Zeus being afraid of the power these beings possessed split them in half leaving them with only one head, one heart, two arms and two legs, fating them to be forever in search of their other half. From this story it is inferred that when the two halves find one another they could be in possession of a power that even the gods feared. Love = Power.

     Unfortunately this powerful, envied and desirable force has a dark side. Anyone who has ever had any kind of meaningful relationship will tell you that love can kick the crap out of you. Love, while having the power to free a soul from darkness and despair, also has the power to send that same soul careening into that same darkness and despair. Love can take a person and rip their heart to shreds, beating and torturing them until gasping for breath they plead for release. Love has the power to turn a positive, happy person into a bitter cynic. This begs the question: If love does all these painful things to the human heart, why are we all so desperate to obtain it? What is it about love that we so desperately search for? That when we finally get it we claw and hold on to it for dear life, begging for this one to be more permanent than the last? It’s that power of love. The power felt from new lovers, old lovers and all those in between.

     All we ever wanted was to feel that power.  All we wanted was someone to make our heart ache in a good way, to gather us in their arms, kiss our fears away and tell us that everything will be alright. When it comes right down to it all us humans want is someone who wants us back