You, being human, have a barrier around you, a kind of semi-permeable membrane. Most of the time the people you meet stay firmly outside this membrane. You talk with them, perhaps work together, share a joke or two, but there is a point beyond which they cannot go.
They have a barrier around them as well which, it is understood, you cannot trespass. Occasionally you will get glimpses of the terrain that lies beyond, but if you are smart you know to keep those insights to yourself.
These walls are firmly established, carefully tended to. We keep them in good repair. On occasion we bring out the plaster and paintbrush to patch up a spot here, cover over a stain there. As we work we usually ignore that wrecking ball sitting in the corner.
The wrecking ball of course is sexual passion — those romantic connections that can spark in a moment, thereby keeping the world populated. You never know when that old machinery will fire up and get to work on some spontaneous wall smashing. It’s exhilarating work, that smashing down of walls, all explosions and flying debris.
Afterward, when things have run their course, you might be left with nothing but a big gaping hole in your wall, one that perhaps provides an unsightly view to your inner world, of some unfortunate pile of dirty laundry suddenly in plain sight.
At which point you grab your spatula and your paintbrushes, and you patiently get to work fixing up the wall.
Secretly hoping, of course, that one day something else will come along and smash into it.
It is astonishing that you seem to avoid to talk about love here. Sharing “sexual passion” for me leads to some kind of sport and sport doesn’t have the potential to leave a big gaping hole in your wall.
But on the other hand, I don’t know what “romantic” connection means. 😉
Yes, I wasn’t talking about love. Love is much more than mere sexual passion — definitely more than one of “those romantic connections that can spark in a moment”.
True love, which sustains us, is not so much a smashing down of walls but of gently, and over time, taking down our defenses, with full acknowledgement of the dangers involved, and of the need for compassion.
Sport is, indeed, just sport. But the distance between love and sport is large, and the territory between them can be treacherous.
Love can show up in a thousand of different colours. Seldom it is a look, a laughter and a smile and a “I knew you in an instant”.
I actually don’t believe in “true love”, I believe in science saying that your pretty pink glasses work for a year or two as a maximum and then you should better have worked on your relationship. 😉
And the most (to me) funny stuff I have ever heard from a guy is: “I wanted you from the first moment I saw you.” That is one of those sentences, when I hear them, I have to keep myself from laughing out loud.
Or a “the very first moment, when I saw coming into the room, I wanted to spend the evening alone with you.”
Maybe it is all because a beautiful body doesn’t attract me, only a beautiful mind does.
I might neither understand the concept of sexual passion, nor the concept of true love. 😉