Love is ?

I wrote these words a few years ago now, under another guise and during a different stage in my life.
But the words are still relevant and worthy of a Valentines post.
With the world today, Feb 14th 2016 supposedly back in a Cold War, with tensions running high in numerous countries and fighting continuing in others, with politicians more interested in bickering with each other to win votes than actually solving problems today, with new diseases being found and old ones not yet cured, the words "I Love You" should perhaps be spoken more often to more people and we might find peace in areas we never thought possible, and loved ones might not leave us so soon, or at least not with out knowing how we feel about them.

Love Is ?                                                 

The only successful relationship I ever had, was with food. 

And even then I cheated.

February is about love. Albeit the mass market variety.  

St Valentines Day fills me with angst on so many levels. 

Some people find my theory on love quite bizarre, yet I find it even stranger that we must mark love with its own special day. Surely if love is a spontaneous and all encompassing emotion, it should be celebrated on a daily basis, not just by the marking of a particular day to express our feelings for another.

Perhaps it is a reflection of modern life, that we are just too busy to show emotion, take time out of our all too important daily tasks to remind those special in our lives that they are dear and loved to us? Perhaps if people stopped taking selfies, they might have time for others.

What exactly does St Valentines celebrate anyway? 

The secret unrequited love of a couple never met? 

A burning passion one can never achieve, or is it truly the celebration of a couple who have found true and ever lasting love?

I’m just not sure what kind of love I have felt in my life nor wether I’m worthy of the cards I receive. Does more than one card from different people make me a bad person or just lucky? 

Is it bad to send more Valentines cards than I do at Christmas? 

We do not all believe in Christmas but surely we do all believe in love! And to spread the feeling of love is a far better cause.

True love, unrequited love, pure love, never-ending love, unconditional love, undying love, puppy love, familial love, platonic love or a love that transcends time. When did something so simple, become so mind bogglingly complicated?

Some people seem to find love easy, some find it immensely difficult and others like me, find it perplexing.

I once worked as part of a small team. We were like the four Musketeers; just better looking!  

Our quartet consisted of a youthful Mr. Twenty something, two thirty something’s and myself at forty.(remember I wrote this a few years back)

We were a very stereo typical group of chefs. One in four marriages end in divorce and the elder of the two thirty some-things fit that bill.

The younger thirty something had been in one relationship all his life and was happily married, having found his true love early on.

Mr Twenty something, a young radical with spiky un-brushed hair full of “product” , styling mousse and texture putty was a good looking kid who found the game of love easy, yet the saying of the words immensely difficult.

To round out the quartet there was myself. Forty, single and typical of our star sign Aries.

Aries people have life tough. 

We are by birth, lovers and playboys. Read any astrological page and they tell you we are players of the game; lovers who act compulsively. It’s not our fault. The stars simply align themselves every time we pass a person of the opposite sex. 

A cosmic wave fills me, there and then with love!

It is not a game. It’s very serious. For me, love expresses how I feel. Right then! Right there! I can walk down the street and fall in love every ten feet.

It sounds like fun, but you have no idea. 

A simple task of shopping can take hours and I’ll return home with a hundred new phone numbers.

My therapist says this stems, not only from my star sign, but my size. 

I have and always will be a little on the big side. Since childhood I have known the taunts one can receive for being different. I do not necessarily stand out like a sore thumb, more like a pumpkin on a tomato vine. To say it simply, I felt sometimes un-loved as a child. I know what power this simple word can hold.

Saying “I LOVE YOU” , means far more to hear, than it does to say.

Mr Twenty something , even in a relationship with a person for whom he has “feelings”, finds the word difficult to verbalise. 

His is a set of principals and beliefs I respect from an age gone by, whilst Mr Divorcee never wants to hear or say the words again for fear of the financial ramifications.

But to make others feel loved even for a second, is an amazing experience to share. 

As Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote,” Tis better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all”.

Perhaps if the world could relate to these three little words, like I do, we would have far less wars and unrest. 

We all deserve to be loved and to find love, even if for a fleeting moment whilst shopping.

For me, just to hear the words, to read them, to write them or to type them to another, fills my day with joy.

Imagine seven billion people feeling the way I do. 

It would be like the sixties all over again! Would that be so bad?

Happy Valentines Day and may love find you all where ever you are and what ever your situation.

Hitting the "Delete" button in life....!!

DELETE..

DELETE…

DELETE…

ESC...

Ctrl. ALT. DELETE...

DELETE...

Nothing works !!

Hitting the delete button in a modern world seems simplistic.

Delete  “Contacts” on Blackberry.

”Block sender” in email.

“Remove” friends from Facebook.

But what of the human mind?

A love spurned , a love mis-understood, mis-judged, mis-timed, a love unrequited, ……the trivialities of life.

Pain and anguish, angst and regret now flow through the veins where whence blood  flowed, both head and heart throb in unison; troubled, agonizing throbbing.

But our minds....the most powerful software of them all has no "delete" button.

Why can it not easily forget the love that once was?

Refresh its browser and be anew for another day!

Pablo Neruda knew of the angst I am living through,” Love is so short, forgetting is so long.”

But in his day there was no technology. It was all pen paper, typewriter and carbon paper.

Forgetting lasted as long as it took the ink to fade....Today it gets stored in memory for ever.

We are surrounded by whiz kids and wunderkinds who think they are so smart and have made billions from gigabytes of junk, well why cant they turn their attention to the human computer for a while.

Eradicate our viruses.

Delete our junk.

Remove the hard drive and wipe it clean with a magnet.

Scrub the mother board and reset the power for a newer longer and refreshed life.

Remove the stored problems, the junk,  and the lost love and make me a shiny model filled with terabytes of possibility rather than an aged computer filled with megabytes of regret.

I had one beloved laptop, an Apple Mac Air, which survived countless rounds of emotions and numerous travels with me only to lose it to the burnt out hard rive division within 3 years.

I lost everything, wiped clean with no hope of memory restoral. When it came back from the store it was like new, but had that glazed look about its screen. It was the same, but different. It knew nothing of our previous time together.

I want to be like that too.

I want that glazed look when I look at some people.

As if perhaps we have met but without the longing pain of wanting to hug, to kiss to say sorry, forgive me, take me back, love me, never leave me, be mine, grow old with me, I love you forever.

Some things in life just never will be.

Some code in the human computer just does not sync with other formats.

My hardware may be an older version and hers newer, my code simply outdated.

As I age , I fear my code , whilst the starting blocks of most life and the structure on which all modern computing  has been based, is merely becoming shelved and looked upon, revered , bypassed for a the flashier, speedier more prestigious brand.

Perhaps love and the understanding of it is the final bug in the computing program. Perhaps X and Y do not always make Z.

The newer models may have faster methods of dealing with things, deleting and removing unwanted information, us older models merely crash, burn out, fade to grey,  our screens darkened but the hearts still beating with what could have been, misunderstood thanks to core processors incapable of being read properly by a newer generation.

I have heard and previously quoted such clichés as “to have loved and lost is better than to have never loved at all” , “when one door closes another opens" and I am afraid I find them wrong today!

Doors are too numerable and  entering , being lead into doorways where we have no vision to where it itself leads is destiny for yet more pain and further regret. 

"To have loved and lost", depends on the depth of the loss and the seriousness, the depth of the love in the first place. I truly believe it would be better to have never loved than to suffer the human condition of loss at all.

No, of others words that help me at a time such as this I prefer Sufi Epigram who stated,” "When the heart grieves over what is has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left."

My spirit for now is in sleep mode.

I have reset the button of my hearts computer and when it restarts, rekindles, flickers to life once more I hope too the spirit and soul can rejoice over what remains.

An old beat up computer I may be…but laying within, there are spare parts even the young geniuses of today would kill for…

There’s life within this old dinosaur yet perhaps !!!

Another "ONE", bites the dust........!!

The beauty of written words, is that you can delete them.

But some words do not deserve to be deleted.

Their existence can be an important reminder.

A reminder to stay on track, to stay the course and be true to ourselves, a reminder of weakness or a reminder of the amazing things we have seen and done.

I have lost count at how many people have commented on my blog about “The One”.

Is She truly the One? Who is THE ONE? Is the ONE the ONE to get a ring?

Well let me put it to you all, this way.

Sometimes the ONE needs to be clarified.

The ONE that got away! or The last ONE! Or the ONE that broke my heart ! or just another ONE in a long line of ONEs!

Locks on the Bridge,"Pont Des Arts", Paris, prove ones undying commitment for the "ONE"

I could of course simply tell a “fib” and say the ONE was the perfect ONE and that me and ONE are living happily ever after? Or I could delete reference to the ONE all together and never have anyone ask me again about the experience ever again?

But why , that is life afterall?

“That which does not kill us, simply makes us stronger”…so said someone else!!

And I am a strong believer that to have loved the ONE for a fleeting moment in time ..... to have felt the loving embrace and warmth of returned affection even for a moment, is better than to have never felt it throughout a lifetime.

I am lucky that in my lifetime I have had the pleasure of many ONEs.

Perfect ONEs at the time until our relationship hot its 'expiration date", and they just became...the last ONE.

The ONE may be gone, but soon she will be replace by another ONE, who in turn will undoubtedly be replace by ONE more.

I am a transient person living a transient lifestyle.

I travel often and my heart travels with me, hence where ever I go,  I find some ONE to fill the current void.

It may be horrific to consider for some. Some people have found their ONE, a ONE AND ONLY  but for me I have not been so lucky.

No ONE ever stays forever.

One day I might be so lucky, till then, Next ONE please??

Who really needs some "ONE" when we all have PARIS!!!!!!
The real "One and Only"