ILLOGICAL LOVE

The great loves of my life have almost all been illogical.

They were relationships that had I listened to my head I would have talked myself out of.

I guess that is the nature of true and lasting love. Love does not make sense. At least it does not for me. The most significant people in my life have arrived in surprising ways and remained despite the odds being against them. The really great loves have had an element of mystery around them. They have all been unanticipated surprises. When the love really landed, I stepped back from each with a sense of “I didn’t see that coming.”

I believe that is what made them the really great loves.

I would have never dreamed that my entire life would be changed by a split-second decision to stay for a Unity service that I was completely ready to ditch out on.

I could never have guessed that this non-Catholic would spend a significant portion of my life traversing this earth in the company of nuns. Especially a former nun who would be become the best friend of this lifetime.

Nothing prepared me for eventually marrying an over the top gay activist that initially sent me scurrying in the opposite direction whenever I saw him approaching.

In just those examples an illogical and surprising change of mind changed the entire trajectory of my life.

As a result, I have ceased trying to make sense out of love. I do not consciously look for reasons to love. I simply lean against and often through the reasons my mind gives not to.

That must begin in here.

I hail from a long line of logical lovers.

Love had to be earned and behaviorally sustained. One wrong move and love was withheld. Shame and silent treatment were tools of torment for this sensitive and illogical heart. And so that became the love equivalent that would darken quite literally decades.

I am unskillful, often unconscious, and far, far from perfect. If I wait to deserve love, I will never know it. I must go with illogical love if I am ever to have it. Applied within, a context is set to know it from without.

And I have known great, passionate, totally illogical love.

I have always loved to be surprised. And the greatest surprises of my life have been these intense and illogical loves.

Most of these loves have transitioned out of this realm of experience. And yet I find myself loving them more with every passing day.

Totally illogical.

Total love.