Love's labour lost

Love. The epic idea which is the stuff of all creative genius. The bane and the boon of all civilizations. Love it was that destroyed Troy; yet, love it was that has been the breadwinner for all great playwrights. All you need is love: if all goes well, you live happily ever after; if it doesn’t, you become a poet/philosopher.

Ah! The pain of falling in love! The fleeting joy, the momentous pleasure, the ephemeral ecstasy that connects you to the one that your heart desires... and the hopeless dread that fills the void when it is gone.

Joy, pleasure, and ecstasy: for you are all aglow – as long as it lasts. Fleeting, momentous, and ephemeral – nonetheless – for it is never to last.

Such is the nature of emotion when it is tied, yet never to be reciprocated.

The lover struggles to stay tied to every strand of memory – like an addict hopelessly holding on to the last whiff of opium; a shipwrecked sailor whose only consolation is that a rescue boat arrives before all his energies give up and cause him to forsake that one piece of ply to which his life clings.

And yet, you cannot but ignore the dread of desolation – the pervading sense of gloom and despair, accompanied by the chagrin of having attached yourself to something – once it is gone.

So, remember this, if you are ever to fall in love, my dear: it is not for the weak at heart. It is, but, for those who are willing to circumnavigate in the eternal dance of death. For those who can play, rejoice and revel in the stakes of the heart: where every single deal would fill you with ethereal joy or hopeless dread. And while the joy transcends us all, the pain envelops us like a cocoon – whence no beautiful butterfly ever shall bloom.

And yet, the misery is yet another flighty bird – for love may sink into the horizon, but the earth is round.