Is Love Enough?

I was walking home after our run with my dad, the sunshine was warm and just right for a late-May morning. We engaged in a fruitful conversation about love and found ourselves asking: is love enough?

At once, I saw this visual in my head. A vision of a crystal ornament shattered into a thousand pieces on the ground and a mystical, invisible force rearranging all the pieces mid-air and bringing the ornament to its original, whole shape. We all know that once things are broken, there isn't any way to stick the pieces back together and at the same time have a shape that is free of cracks, gaps, and imperfections. There isn't a way back to wholeness once things get broken. There isn't a super-glue which can bring perfection back again to life, not once things are completely destroyed.

But is that true for our hearts? I mean, they get broken all the time. We feel shattered, lost, fragmented many times a life, but in some magical way, some of us find themselves on their way back to wholeness as if they never got broken, as if they've never been hurt, rising strong with trust, faith, and light.

I believe that the magical force that brings us all back to wholeness is love.

It's magical, isn't it, to fall in love? Not just with people but with passions, fetishes, and life? I believe all of us have been through such a beautiful experience where we lose the sense of time, flow into a state where we are effortlessly connected to something or someone, and feel the urge to sacrifice everything for just one more moment in this state. It could be a conversation with a loved one, a long night spent working on an important project, spending time in the arms of an expansive sea, or a starry night sky.

We fall in love over and over, and it somehow brings us back to a state of wholeness, perfection, and divine oneness.

In spite of this, is love enough?

For a person who believed that life depended so much on finding love, I can confidently say that love, alone, does not suffice. It does not really mean anything on its own, without the counterparts and the journey that eventually leads to it.

So in relationships, a lot comes before love. Before love exists a process of getting fragmented, shattered, and broken into pieces. Before love, exist the arguments, challenges, differences, polarities, and imperfections with tension and pressure too strong that it falls apart. Before love, there is the vulnerability to expose our brokenness, the courage to stay on the ground for a while, take ownership of those pieces and say that yes, those pieces are mine, they belong to me.

Before love comes respect for oneself and the other. The respect which stems from acknowledging that each partner is originally a whole, not a half. Before love comes the notion of being empowered enough to take ownership of the pieces that once belonged to us, the very fragmented ones that feel too far from being ours because they don't seem to fit anywhere in our wholeness, for how can our imperfections fit into where we used to be? How can our little anxieties, fears, and bad habits ever become a masterpiece? But when we finally do gather the courage to believe that they absolutely do have a place in all of this, create strategies and plans to find those pieces again, we can start our journey towards love.

And along the journey, we will gather the power to magnetise those pieces back to where they belong. This becomes wholeness, strength, and genuineness. This becomes the magical feeling we all long for.

But can't you see that it takes so much to actually feel in love? Also, it takes ever much the same time and courage to maintain our wholeness, at least until we experience another blow, another time of extreme pressure and tension that we can't help but shatter again.

I think before love, there are so many things to consider. There is this notion that we need to accept one another's fragmented selves before loving the whole. There is this notion of agreeing on certain paths and strategies to find our ways back to where we belong. There is this contract to stay committed, no matter how long it takes, no matter how messy and dark and arduous it becomes, even if it brings the worst in us, and still accept it. It's this promise to accept how mysterious it may turn out to be.

I guess there is so much to do before love, so much work. It shouldn't be effortless. It shouldn't be just a look in the eye. It's looking into your partner's eye and feeling a stillness, a soft kind of presence and calmness to roll up your sleeves, dig in the dirt and do the real work. It doesn't depend on love at first sight, it's love till the last sight. 

So before truly looking into the eyes of your lover and making that promise, ask yourself whether you'll be able to accept the fragments. Ask yourself whether you'll be able to do the work equally. Ask yourself whether your own and your lover's wholeness will add an ever-growing value to work on what you really dream to accomplish and attain as a team because there's a long way to go when it comes to building a family.

Ask yourself whether you're willing to share the same vision following the leadership of one another. Ponder upon how it would look like if both of you failed at accomplishing your common dreams, how it would seem like to appreciate this failure and start again. Ask yourself whether, with your partner, the common vision seems more attainable, because each one of you brings a different force that fuels the energy to keep going. Ask yourself if you know and accept those forces, feel comforted and safe while they're being brought forward because this force will eventually be the way you keep pedaling towards your truest mission. This force will eventually be what you bring forward every day.

Before love, it's the strife to become the best version of oneself. 

Before love, there's a willingness to appreciate the finite in one another's company.

So, is love enough? It seems that it barely is, but the journey towards it is certainly more than just enough.