Love. You're Either in it or You're Not.

A Field Report.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

There is a field. I'll meet you there.

— Rumi

There’s a funny kind of love in the human race.

It doesn’t really reflect love at all.

Like a character whose development arc lagged a few seasons behind.

‘Love’ shows up with many faces.

Projection. Desire. Judgement.

Control. Ownership. Convenience.

Its absence is endlessly defended.

And for some, it has never been known.

Because love doesn’t have anything to do with those things.

Love—it’s always there.

The question is, are you?

It feels like humanity hasn’t quite got the memo on love.

People act it.

Express it.

Say they feel it.

Everyone tries to do it.

Which is kind of a problem.

Because it is a being word.

And mistaking love for all of those things is causing more damage than simply denying it at all.

Human ‘love’ has a certain flavour of performance.

I will adore you as long as you don’t embarrass me.

I will show up as long as you don’t ask more of me.

I will make digs about that girl’s photo you double tapped—but I won’t actually leave you.

All in the name of love.

So many conditions.

So much constraint.

And absolutely none of the liberation.

Do people know love is endless?

That its vastness is terrifying?

That the body cannot even encounter its true presence without releasing a hormonal cocktail that will not only rival your drug of choice, but render it obsolete?

And so, why is its existence avoided?

Perhaps—those are the reasons.

Because transaction is safer than freedom.

To love without bounds is to open yourself to complete destruction.

Certain annihilation.

To the reality that another person is an entire universe that you cannot control, predict or possess.

True love doesn’t negotiate. It doesn’t bargain. It doesn’t require earning or maintaining or even reciprocation.

It just is—like gravity.

The only certainty?

It’s eventual end.

Through death, loss, haphazardness?

The kind where you offer your heart on a platter to an unconscious person, simply doing their best and they slip and your heart goes a splutter?

That heart.

Your centre of gravity.

When it beats, it will magnetise all those here to love you.

A faint hum available to all and tuned into by little.

When it closes, no signal to be found.

Build the walls. Station the guards and sound the war sirens.

That’s why no-one’s heard of it.

Its low-level buzz requires peace to be audible.

And even then, those who have heard it might sometimes wish they hadn’t.

But I sure wish more people would try.