Bridges
Love is throwing a grappling hook across a deep dark abyss. Love is building an unsteady bridge from one precarious ledge to another. Love is lining up two solid walls, and hoping they fit together.
We are born alone. From the moment we think our first thought, which probably involves wordlessly wondering why we're upside down in a bag of liquid, or why it is suddenly bright and cold when we leave that bag, we are each in our own little fortresses. These garrisons hold us and keep us and as we grow they grow with us. They add rooms and hallways. Locked doors appear where we keep our dark secrets and the things we wish not to look at. Gardens grow where the beautiful things in our lives live. These citadels grow ever more complex the older we get. The ultimate manifestation of our individuality, our minds are a castle in which our selves live and grow.
But theses castles isolate us. We cannot cross over into another's mind. Our thoughts are private, whether we need or want them to be or not. We are alone in our minds, cut off from the rest of the world. While we may interact with the world via our bodies, we are always alone in within the impenetrable walls of our minds.
And so we have love, that ultimate act of reaching, of wanting to break down walls and overcome isolation. Love is knowing the halls in another castle. Love is memorizing the twists and turns of a place you've never been, nor will ever be. Love is standing on tiptoe and peeking out from your own mind and over the walls of another's mind. This is the wonderful, the dangerous thing about love. We are alone in our minds, but love seeks to end that isolation. It never can, but love tries. It seeks to do the impossible: to build bridges across the empty abyss between two minds and seek to draw two lonely fortresses together.
We are born alone. From the moment we think our first thought, which probably involves wordlessly wondering why we're upside down in a bag of liquid, or why it is suddenly bright and cold when we leave that bag, we are each in our own little fortresses. These garrisons hold us and keep us and as we grow they grow with us. They add rooms and hallways. Locked doors appear where we keep our dark secrets and the things we wish not to look at. Gardens grow where the beautiful things in our lives live. These citadels grow ever more complex the older we get. The ultimate manifestation of our individuality, our minds are a castle in which our selves live and grow.
But theses castles isolate us. We cannot cross over into another's mind. Our thoughts are private, whether we need or want them to be or not. We are alone in our minds, cut off from the rest of the world. While we may interact with the world via our bodies, we are always alone in within the impenetrable walls of our minds.
And so we have love, that ultimate act of reaching, of wanting to break down walls and overcome isolation. Love is knowing the halls in another castle. Love is memorizing the twists and turns of a place you've never been, nor will ever be. Love is standing on tiptoe and peeking out from your own mind and over the walls of another's mind. This is the wonderful, the dangerous thing about love. We are alone in our minds, but love seeks to end that isolation. It never can, but love tries. It seeks to do the impossible: to build bridges across the empty abyss between two minds and seek to draw two lonely fortresses together.