It has come to my attention recently that the effects of love and indifference can, on the surface, look identical. Before your brain boggles, let me explain:
To love a person, you must let him/her go.
You let people go all the time that you don't particularly care about. In dating situations, you might simply just not call for that second or third date. In business situations, you tighten your network. In fb land, you purge your friendlist. You let go.
But you also let go of people you love very best. Mothers send their children off to college every year. And to kindergarten (maybe the same mom doesn't do both every year, but...). Fathers watch their teenagers take the car, wondering if both will make it back in one piece. Caretakers sit by the sickbed, coming to terms with the inevitable in quiet conversations - and often, the sick try to hold on until their loved ones are a little more ready. In relationships, sometimes you love people so much that even though it hurts like a knife to contemplate them being happy with someone else, you know that they wouldn't be happy and it's better to end the relationship sooner rather than later--before it hurts even more.
Love is a 'many splendored thing' - comes in different sizes and shapes. Actually, the love emanating from each person is never the same color or shape or density because no two people are alike...and every person loves no two other people in exactly the same way, so the shape of love between two people is also varied.
Love, as recorded earlier in my All in a Word post, can be unrequited. Or unbalanced. Too giving, or too selfish. No wonder speakers of other languages get so frustrated by the word "love" in English. There's only one word for it. Not like "moisture" (rain, sleet, snow, drizzle, shower, thunderstorm). Adding descriptors is necessary. Maybe the English needed reasons to constantly re-think, re-define, re-actualize their love. Maybe they were just too lazy to come up with new beautiful words to describe their feelings.
In any case, love is a gift - to receive, and to give - each spark of true love is unique, culminating in burning heartfires. So I'm going to treasure each flare of sulphur I receive, and rejoice in every stick of kindling I give...until the time comes to let go.
