Anything Considered

I used to be a hopeless romantic. I am still a hopeless romantic. I used to believe that love was the highest value. I still believe that love is the highest value. I don’t expect to be happy. I don’t imagine that I will find love, whatever that means, or that if I do find it, it will make me happy. I don’t think of love as the answer or the solution. I think of love as a force of nature - as strong as the sun, as necessary, as impersonal, as gigantic, as impossible, as scorching as it is warming, as drought-making as it is live-giving. And when it burns out, the planet dies.

My little orbit of life circles love. I daren’t get any closer. I’m not a mystic seeking final communion. I don’t go out without SPF 15. I protect myself.

But today, when the sun is everywhere, and everything solid is nothing but its own shadow, I know that the real things in life, the things I remember, the things I turn over in my hands, are not houses, bank accounts, prizes or promotions. What I remember is love - all love - love of this dirt road, this sunrise, a day by the river, the stranger I met in a cafe. Myself, even, which is the hardest thing of all to love, because love and selfishness are not the same thing. It is easy to be selfish. It is hard to love who I am. No wonder I am surprised if you do.

JEANETTE WINTERSON, Lighthousekeeping

I came across this quote on a friend's blog. And even though I would hardly think of myself as a hopeless romantic, I agree with so much in this little segment of Winterson's writing. After all, who can deny that love, for better or worse, really is in so many ways a force of nature?

Whatever our priorities may be, it's hard to pretend that we don't need love. I know I do. And even though it can often be so easy to be selfish and seek to move things to better myself, there is always a deep-set yearning to give, to love - to sacrifice.

Of course, it isn't easy. And very often I'll find that I had been awfully misguided in this and that. But that's the way love is.

It won't stop. Not like that.