Saying For Today: I suddenly realized that I sensed love for someone or something for the first time in my life and could not place it in a category. I could not name it.
She asked, "Sir, how do you define love?" "I don't," the Sage replied. "Why not?" she questioned. "You can define things. Love is not a thing," said the Sage. "So," she inquired," you don't know what love is?" "No," said the Sage, "I don't know what it is, but I know it."
*Brian K. Wilcox. "Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
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I had been pondering for weeks about love for someone. I do not say "my love," for it is not mine. It had intensified over time. Often, at a distance, this love manifests as a strong connection, as though present in the same space while physically apart. At times, this spontaneous sense of nonlocal connection is present, and at times not.
The sense of love befuddled me. I had always been able to fit love into a type with an object, from saying things like, "I love God" to "I love cheese and mushroom pizza."
In English, we say we love a people or a someone or everyone, some clothing, a car, sports, a favorite dish of food, sunsets, rainy days, snowy days, our new flannel pajamas, everyone, ourselves, reading, running, solitude, walks in the wood, a job, ... We talk of spiritual love, divine love, romantic love, platonic love, parental love, friendship love, universal love, unconditional love, everlasting love, God's love, friendship love, marital love, my love, your love, our love, ... That is weird - how we use the word "love" in such an array of settings and with so many objects. Since "love" means so many things, does it mean anything - really?
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I suddenly realized that I sensed love for someone or something for the first time in my life and could not place it in a category. I could not name it. The left side of the brain aids in having a sense of control by labeling intangibles. And the left side of my brain could not fit this love - or whatever - with a type of love - not even with "love."
I realized the word "love" has no inherent meaning. I before knew this conceptually. Now, I knew it nonconceptually to a degree I had not before. We have a sense or a feeling and are socialized to name it love. All my life, I had been repeating "love" in ways I was taught by word and example - nothing is errant about this, but we need to appreciate the illusoriness of such thought: indeed, all thought.
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Using the word "love, " one could ask, "Do you have love for her?" - We hear of this claim of having love for someone. - I could reply, "No. I don't have love for her or anyone." Why? One way of saying this is, "Love has me so that it can love others." And since love is not a thing, no one can have it. Since love is in flux, also, one cannot maintain a single something she calls love. Love has a potentially infinite degree of fluxing faces, while it is not anything - any one thing and not a thing.
I was not disturbed to realize this ineffability and impermanence of love for this other person. I had the insight that "love" is not absolutely love and that the not-something never remains the same. Also, I knew under all we can call love is that which makes all love possible. Yet, love is something when using "something" relatively. Hence, I had no nihilistic-like response to this revelation. My appreciation of love was enhanced by the insight.
This insight into love was freeing and uplifting. It was like letting a wildness we label "love" out into the open to roam and run as it chooses - it runs and roams, anyway. I could accept this love for the person without trying to make it fit somewhere or somehow. I could be with the gift of it. I cherished it more as a grace for being unable to get it, manage it, or understand it. I had no sense of needing to speak of this with the person, only stay out of the way, welcoming it to be as it is and becomes moment to moment.
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Later, I decided to write about this experience, calling it "Love knows Love." Only love knows love. Love knows love, not understands love. We may experience a love that, figuratively speaking, blows our minds. Yet, the heart knows. Love between persons is love communicating with love, not needing to know the why, how, or what.
The silent sharing is a holy communion. One finds gladful, quiet contentment by relaxing into this experience which no one can make happen, only prepare oneself for it possibly to happen.
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and title and place of photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
