Legacy

Photograph by Sahir Khan

What does love have to do with us today – aspiring college students – whose canvases may have no plans for another’s paint? To what extent are our amorous pursuits a necessary distraction from the ordinary? And further, what then of our individual dreams and ambitions? Do they wither away in the face of love?

Some think so. They think when you let love linger, you lose a part of yourself. So they avoid it, worried for their independence. I think they’ve already lost it through fear. For if they let love’s danger direct them only away from it, they’re living by default and without a full heart.

It’s true love can be like a drug. Its thin waft may dilate our mind’s eye – and in a blink – we become something else. We may act strangely under its influence, victims of some unfamiliar endorphin sequence. It can be a revolving door, its vectors leaving as soon they arrive.

But we were born from it, that love, our conception impeccably timed – forged of its fires and tempered in the eye of its storm. They say every life is a miracle. Why then should we spurn the same synchronous forces which engendered us? Just as we should not settle in choosing a partner, we should not dismiss love at the door on principal alone. That’s when love lingers.

This does not mean we should compromise our upward trajectory on the mere chance of love. Without discretion, it may drive us downward, perpetuating our vices. Rather, we can invest in love without gambling on it. We do it by investing in ourselves. It will yield a better, more attractive crop. The universe will decide when it’s ripe.

A calculus professor once spoke to me about her subject:

“Where you are isn’t all that important.

It is, but it’s only a relative point. It’s where you’re headed that’s important.”

Perhaps we really can wander around without knowing the exact coordinates of our destination. As long as we head the right direction, love may serve to complement our life experience, not trespass against it. We need not follow love around, as true love is not forced. It can find us effortlessly, folded in the darkest basement or crowning the most majestic plateau. Therefore, let us compel it to flourish in our slipstream as we ascend to the sky.

When we unite with love, we show concern for its welfare, not for the ways it may impede our personal progress. Only we can do that. Not love. Not that same love our dreams very much rely upon to thrive. Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” speaks on the acoustics of love as it resonates between partners:

“Fill each other’s cup but drink not from the same cup.

For the pillars of the temple stand apart, and the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”

So how do you speak of love? Do you do it with a smile? Do you swear it off through a clenched and drunken jaw? Do you scramble it in the frequencies of a cell phone transmission? Does a computer screen light the way for you to type its name after the city goes to sleep?

I say you do it with purpose – with maturity. You do it with love for yourself.

Without that, where are we headed anyway?