The following may contain bitterness and/or madness. Enjoy.

Dear Love,

Plato wrote some centuries ago about a Greek drinking party dedicated to the god of love. The attendees praised the god one by one with a monologue, including the playwrighter Aristophanes. Aristophanes told a tale about how we humans were originally created as spherical beings with four arms, four legs and a single head. However one day our ancestors offended the gods, whereupon Zeus decided to teach us a lesson (as always *sigh*). As a punishment, he devided us into two. This may be the start of our wonderings of where the other half may be. It's become our destiny to find number 2 and make us yet one again. But why is it so important to become spherical? Is it so bad being alone?

I find that love nowadays gets thrown around like it's worth nothing. We're turning love into a must have, instead of treating it like a rarity. We're trying to create relations from the feeling of necessity. However, I think it's arguable that we ought to find love in another being. Shouldn't we first love ourselves before we run straight into the arms of a socalled lover? The big arms represented as a safe haven, which ought to return our faith to our believes. You could ask yourself if it's faith that you've found or just another opinion to compliment your believes. Because when the day turns into night, which feeling will leave the presence of the surface first?

Every song is based upon the principle of loving and being loved back. But it's also rather creating an image of what we ought to miss. Being alone is to be found as a capital punishment, which makes us desperately trying to catch butterflies and pin them onto the wall of our hopes. We are approached as individuals, but as a couple we're supposed to concur the world. Why is the couple superiour to the individual? Aren't we destined to first develop our own personae before we try to answer that of others? Aren't we as individuals good enough?


It's almost laughable that we've created, in this day and age, a concept of love whereas we try to Individualize every way towards it. We're shown a standardization of how to "properly" love. But how can we live like fairytales, if the story is already foreseen? Happy ever after gets turned into a broken heart within time. It can make one wonder if love is meant to be loved? Or should we be satisfied by the fact that we're priveliged enough to receive it, experience it in the first place? Are we taking love for granted? Do we need to work for it, make a hole in the slibbery mud with our bare hands, waiting for someone to offer theirs so we can get dirty together? Is love, or maybe life itself, about getting dirty and not washing your hands until you've dug a hole to the otherside of the world? Hereby making every love affair a helping hand into your own ditch. Or maybe a seperate ditch that's been made from scratch by two lovers. Who knows?! Maybe the world is covered in holes waiting to be dugged further and further until there's no earth left. No slibbery mud to close a ditch and no slibbery mud to make the journey our own. Is there even an "our own" in the ditch of you and me? Aren't you and me in that scenario you-and-me? Willard Gaylin wrote in his book Rediscovering Love that the concept of fusion, you-and-me, means that you lose your identity in that of another. The line between two people is blurred or gone, "the sense of unsureness as to where I end and you, the person I love, begin".

If we dug a hole together, becoming a spherical being again, means that there's no individual we've so desperately created over the years. I becomes we and we are at once I. But do we need to give up all our personal gravings to become what once was me (a spherical being)? Can't we dug together and yet stay appart? Is it possible to have three ditches at once? One for you, one for me and one for us. Making us individual yet connected. Maybe we ought to ban "us" to build a bridge between you and me. Making our seperate ditches indeed connected and our individuality protected. 

But isn't the graving of the individual, and thereby the need for protecting it, a whole new meaning of love. Is love for that matter of fact something that changes through time. Maybe hereby we can take marriage as a study case. Up until not long ago, people married not out of love but out of property/possession. And one can even argue that this arrangement still strives forward into some cultures. So love is something relative that doesn't always proceeds in a two manner way. Whereby one can argue that we don't necessarily are looking for our other half, but for the arrangements one can get better off. And naturally you can get better by finding true love, but sometimes circumstances can make someone fit or unfit depending on what point in life you are. Hereby not gratifying the rise of divorces since the last decade or so, because one can perfectly find love in the eyes of their school sweetheart and be happily married for over 50 years. It's more something like love comes and goes around whenever, wherever. Whereby I could say that what comes around goes around is a song by Justin Timberlake, which is a fine elaboration on how love can change by the act of life. Making the process of splitting the spherical being yet once again into two. Of course whenever, wherever relates back to Shakira. "Wherever, whenever, we're meant to be together", so it doesn't matter where you dig, one way or another we'll be connected and it doesn't really matter where the hole is and if you've already started digging. Love will find a way to make sure that you won't succumb until you've reached the end of the world.

'I'm afraid it's terribly hackneyed - just buried treasures,' said Edward.
'Indeed? But that sounds most exciting!'
'I know. Like Treasure Island. But our problem lacks the usual romantic touches. No point on a chart indicated by a skull and crossbones, no directions like "four paces to the left, west by north". It's horribly prosaic - just where we ought to dig.'
(...)
'Well, it must be quite simple, really, mustn't it?' said Miss Marple.
'Simple!' said Charmian. 'You come down to Ansteys and see if it's simple!'
It is possible that she did not mean the invitation to be taken seriously, but Miss Marple said briskly, 'Well, really, my dear, that's very kind of you. I've always wanted to have the chance of looking for buried treasure. And,' she added, looking at them with a beaming, late-Victorian smile, 'with a love interest, too!'
Miss Marple's Final Cases -Strange Jest by Agatha Christie-

Love,
Dominique