2004-03-25 - 12:08 p.m. The Open Road Can we love just one person? The question just posed is usually asked in the following manner: �Can you love more than one person?� The difference: My question implies something the other does not. The implication: We love more than one person. Think of life as a road. As you first start your journey you can see over the first hill, you are excited and full wonder at what lies before you. You don�t know what awaits! You have no experience with this road or any roads for that matter! You first steps are shaky, but the wonder and excitement of what lies beyond that first road drives you forward. You don�t even know what to expect; it�s wondrous! As you walk you begin to remember and begin to understand the experiences. I have always wanted to remember as a child what I was thinking when I took my first breath of air. The taste of air for the first time. It�s something I can never experience again. And that is the lesson of the road. As humans we remember and learn, and it�s the blessing that has allowed us to become an advanced civilization based on the backs of the memories of others. But it�s also our curse. Think of the road in front of your house. It�s not new. It never changes. You remember it so well�that it�s ordinary. And this is the danger. Life is like a road in that it soon becomes ordinary. After 25 how much is there left to do that isn�t recycled? Once you have children you are just imparting your 25 (give or take) years of experience onto them. That is until they reach 25 (give or take) when they teach their kids, and then you teach your past 25 years of experience of teaching kids. (catch that?) These are human generations. Back to the road. If it were just you and the road it would be insanity. Pointless. But other people travel these roads. Sometimes they cross your road. Sometimes they merge with yours. Sometimes people take exits off your road. But I think this is my point. At any given time someone may be on your road. When I was younger I dates two girls. I really thought I loved one of them, I think I did love the other�at the time. I struggle with this. In that moment I loved them. Does that make me not love them now? Would it be fair to still love them? Or do I love the idea of them? The ghost image in my past? You probably all have ex�s. Sometimes you hate them�but usually at some point you felt something like love. Something that you may have confused with love. I am in love now. I was in love then. I have loved more than one person, but it�s only a sense of time that makes them different. What makes my love now different than then? I could argue that it was more new, more fresh and sharp in the past, like all things. Does that make my current love worse? I worry that as I grow older life will become Xeroxed so many times that the crispness of it will fade. The edges will blur. I don�t get excited over my birthday or Christmas anymore. I didn�t feel the same thrill when the Patriots won the superbowl the second time. I don�t get the same excitement from music anymore, I can�t recapture that youthful feeling of listening to real rock for the first time� Does Love get worse the more you lose it? Does love fade like life? Our memories of events not only cause us to relive life, but anticipate it. Have you ever gone to see a movie expecting something and then become disappointed because it wasn�t what you expected? That�s life. The more experiences you have, the more life is able to be anticipated, and the more you anticipate, the more you will be disappointed. A wise man (much wiser than me) once said, �The curse humans is that we are trapped in time�our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a sequence of events �a story�and that when can�t figure out what our particular story is we feel lost somehow. Humans have to endure everything in life in agonizingly endless clock time�every single second of it. Not only this, but we have to remember having endured our entire live as well. What a drag, no? It�s amazing we haven�t all gone mad.� | |||||||||||
