Lovers within? Still without....

So these are my latest contributions to the manifesto of love that I've been abstractly compiling.


""Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing you express is the return message."

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moans of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love-dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them."
-Jelaluddin Rumi, "Love Dogs"


"The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along."

-Jelaluddin Rumi

"...This is how it works
You're young until you're not
You love until you don't
You try until you can't
You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took
And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else's heart
Pumping someone else's blood
And walking arm in arm
You hope it don't get harmed
But even if it does
You'll just do it all again..."
- Regina Spektor, "On the Radio"

It's cold in St Louis. Maybe the cold grey-blue skies are responsible for my introspective mood. I've also got a bit of free time on my hands before classes resume, and a mind unoccupied often leads to trouble. Especially for me -- for whom the search for romance never seems to end. I'm not even sure where it should begin.
I decided I'd read some Rumi poetry to take a break from anthropology for a while. The first Rumi poem above, which I came across in a new book, reminded me of the second one, and the bittersweet message that they both contain: the only true love is the desire for true love. It's a Platonic idea. Love is perfect in concept but always ruined in practice.

That's probably true. But Rumi himself found love in the mortal plane, in the person of Shams. What they actually loved wasn't each other, but the mirror that each provided with which to glimpse the divine. That's what I'm looking for - a font of mutual inspiration. Someone who shares my Platonic idea of true love, even while recognizing the impossibility of perfectly translating that ideal into practice. I think Regina captured this part of love in her song. The process of love. The selfish surrender. You have to keep working at it, constantly building it and repairing it when it gets harmed. It may never fit your ideals, but you can still build on it and draw contentment from it.

There's something exhilarating and rejuvenating about new love. New love is the love described in analogies of springtime and flowers and in the pining of lonely strangers that meet. But love doesn't stay new forever. People have to invest in their relationship and build a society of two, something greater than the sum of its parts -- a shared world view and value system defined in dialogue by the couple. Autumn offers colors and textures that spring lacks. I want to build with someone, to learn more about them and myself in the process. I feel like the reason I sometimes don't know myself is because nobody else does. We are social beings or we are merely animals. It's necessary to build wide social networks with friends and colleagues to discover the breadth of what we're about -- to test our limits and expand our horizons. But there's something equally important in the sorts of intimate relationships we seek with each other. Perhaps there are dimensions of the self that can only be revealed when we're alone with that special other who is also a part of us, with whom we share our selves.

The love we seek may be within, like a Platonic ideal, but that doesn't mean we can find it by ourselves. The more I study humankind, the further convinced I am that we are social beings whose entire consciousness is defined by our relationships with each other. We meet many interesting people in our lives, and we may fall in love with a great many of them. But as we are mortal, we only have the opportunity to create shared worlds with a tiny few of them. I've always considered the idea of a single "soul mate" dogmatic; but there's something true in the idea of people being "made for each other," and I attribute it to their compatible world views and common ideas of love and relationship. People who don't believe in lasting relationships hold a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So where does this leave us? How should we act? Maybe we should discuss our deeper beliefs and hopes in earnest, earlier in our relationships. At least with the people we hope to be with for a long time. There are certainly other types of relationships -- maybe we should mutually figure out earlier on what kind of relationship to have with those people, as well. We probably need new vocabulary to describe the many possibilities that exist nowadays. Any suggestions?