I Believe In Love
Dvorak’s 9th symphony. That’s it. That’s my favorite piece of music. David Copperfield my favorite novel, Annabel Lee my favorite poem. Favorite movie is a tough call -- A Trip To Bountiful might bring it in, but of course there are a generous number of categories to be considered in all of these artistic groups.
Perhaps if you know these things about me you might feel as if you understand me, and if you read and watched and listened to all of these you would, I guess, have a fair amount of insight into me, the type of person I am. We all want to be known, understood by at least one other person, it’s a basic human need, like water, quenching the thirst we have to be loved, appreciated by another.
Maybe I could create a new dating phenomenon much like speed dating where instead of asking people if they smoke or what their politics are, or if they consider themselves spiritual or religious, the prospective dater could just ask the different candidates the above questions and they would have in their answers all they really need to know about the other person in a nutshell, as they say. But if I did create such a dating site I would also have to invest in Cliff’s Notes and YouTube movie trailers and song clips and link them all to my site, because the average person is probably not going to do the work involved in getting to know someone, especially if their favorite book is a 600 page tome and their favorite movie is practically unheard of and their favorite music is, according to some, boring.
But here is what I have determined is the central point of sharing this type of information. When you do so you present yourself to the world…this is my favorite of all of the choices out there. Or maybe, succinctly, this is who I am.
What we’re doing when we share in this way is we’re describing ourselves through an alternative medium, saying, if you read this, watch this, listen to this, maybe you will feel the way I do when I read, and watch and listen, and then maybe we will find ourselves on the same frequency. Maybe we will somehow transcend the mundaneness of our every day and reach a higher plane of communication where no one else exists. Maybe if we share the feelings associated with these various artistic ex
There is a famous quote by C.S. Lewis:
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
We are all unique, the combination of all of our favorites melding to form the different emotional states that shape our moods and our proclivities which then foster our interactions with others. I guess the thinking might be that a person who could cry while listening to Dvorak or reading Poe, or fall off their chair laughing at Dickens or embrace Geraldine Page as the phenomenal actress she was, could never hurt, deceive, betray or abandon me. If we shared all of those things we would be bonded; it would be inescapable, unstoppable. I believe it is a relatively rare occurrence though, that kind of connection. You’re probably lucky if you hit one out of four with another person, but there are an infinite number of ways to connect in this life, obviously. In some ways asking the question, “what is your favorite… and why?” and really listening closely to the answer, is a way of saying, “I love you.” You could spend a lifetime getting to know another person in this way.
After my baby was diagnosed with Autism it was impressed upon me that I needed to work tirelessly with her on something called “shared sight.” The goal was to point to something and get her to look at it with me, so that we both experienced it at the same time. This was considered one of the most important milestones we needed to reach. It was a way of teaching her, her brain that is, how to bond with another person through simultaneously viewing something and experiencing the same thing at the same time. I will never forget the day when, my cheek touching hers as I forced her to look, we reached that goal. It is one of my proudest accomplishments. It forever changed the way she interacted with us, and ultimately with other people.
It is impossible to hover indefinitely on or near the same frequency as another person, although when you feel as if you are on that same wavelength it is pretty amazing; it feels like more than love, it feels intrinsic, natural, carnal, even. It is an inexplicable thing sometimes, feeling another person, even one you have never met. It is something to be cherished in this life, if you are fortunate enough to experience it, even for an abbreviated flash in time. Maybe it’s enough if we just find ourselves there at particular moments in the course of our existence, and maybe we just enjoy it while it lasts.
When you share, when you express yourself, no matter how you do it, it’s like you are expanding your bandwidth, increasing the chances that your frequency will vibrate and cross with another’s. The result: love.
I like to think of heaven as another dimension where our souls revel in those feelings that we manifested through all of our favorite emotional ex
I believe in love. That’s what all this is.
By:
Quintesse
Age:
46-50
,
Female
40
responses
