Ouuff

It’s a hot day. The kind of humid hot where everything sticks to your skin. 

Of course I decided to wear a long sleeve shirt…

In part because I don’t like how lanky my arms look without sleeves, but also in part because I am trying to conceal a tattoo on my forearm. The fresh dark engraving isn’t all that new to my body, however it has yet to make an appearance at the family dinner table.

My mom brings yet another plate of delicious home-cooked food and sets it on the table. The various dishes begin to crowd together like the anxious nine-to-fivers hitting a downtown train at 8:55.

Overflowing. Abundant.

Love is expressed in so many different ways, like flowing water it takes the shape of our fears and our insecurities. It pools in areas where we feel a lack, collecting weight at the inflection points of our deepest needs, flooding the unexpecting visitors that are fortunate enough to open the right door.

I love you!

I grasp her hands tightly as we both stand in a dimly lit alley just outside of a bar. My eyes bloodshot from drinking, endless loops of pointless conversation and the stimulants that allow this “good time” to go on.

I’m in love with you, she repeats gently.

I stand there dumbfounded and yet arrogantly confident. A deer in the headlights moment, if the deer was high on coke.

I don’t believe in love.

I proclaim proudly, and immediately flinch from the sheer audacity of my own words. The girl begins to cry. At first gently and then sobbing loudly as she collapses into my proud chest. I ramble on explaining how love is an illusion and a social construct and other half-baked ideas that only make the situation worse and worse by the minute. 

Clarity. Truth.

Are we ever so certain of what love truly is? If it is indeed a language, are we enamoured poets or are we embittered linguists? If it is a game, are we good-sports or the obnoxious fans?

All of the above. All at once.

To love is to be human. It is the vector we set to the Other. To witness and be witnessed. To love and be loved in return. 

To love is to be alive. 

We are done, Alex. You back-stabbed me, you betrayed my trust, I can’t even look at you anymore! 

My friend is overcome with anger. Her eyes are lit with a fire of curiosity and yet glazed-over with the thick fog of hate. She is livid. She wants to see me, and yet she cannot. She wants to see me burn, to see me hurt. She wants to inflict on me what she feels inside. 

Rage.

Hate cannot exist without love. The true opposite of love isn’t hate, it is indifference. 

Indifference is what we are born into. By this I mean the modern world of human relations, not mother Earth that endows us with the gift of life. Whether we like it or not, the human world does not care for us. It is indifferent to our existence. The fact that we make it to an age of self-sufficiency and awareness is a true miracle. Some of us are lucky enough to have people that will give us nourishment and allow us to stand on our own feet, preparing us for the deep and terrifying plunge into the unknown, into a world of indifference.

If we are so lucky… Many, many souls are washed away in this sea of indifference, never getting a chance to catch their breath. 

Never learning to float. Never learning to swim.

When you give someone your attention, you bring them out of the sea of indifference - one breath at a time. You allow them to be, even if just simply alongside you. Creating space for love is crawling out of the waters of indifference onto the life-raft of care. 

It’s saying: Yes, I see you.

I look deep into my lover’s eyes, brushing away the few strands of wet hair stuck onto their forehead. Doing so brings more tears to my own tired eyes.

“I love you, and I don’t want to change you.”

“Me too,” I whisper. “I love all of you just the way that you are. I don’t wish to change you either.”

“So this is it.”

I give a weary nod.

We embrace each other deeply, not wanting to let go, but knowing full well that we must.

“Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.”

— Khalil Gibran

Being no lesser for having loved. No. Blessed to feel so deeply. Blessed to be alive.

There is an immense beauty in every atom of love. In every attempt at a connection and every breath shared. With every new moment, new push and new pull, I row my boat proudly. I am not indifferent.

I extend my arm towards a bowl of salad just outside my reach and in that moment feel the nagging pull of my long sleeve. With-out thinking I quickly roll up the shirt in one fellow swoop of humid frustration. 

“Ahhh”

“What’s that?” asks my mom

“A tattoo.” I answer quickly, as I realize I have accidentally revealed myself.

“Oh here we go,” says my dad.

My mom shuffles around some more plates.

“What does it mean?” 

“Yes, And” I reply, trying to give as little context as possible. 

“Hah.” 

A silence lingers in the air.

“Are you a prostitute?” inquires my dad, sneaking in a smirk between his bites.

“No, I am not a prostitute,” I respond.

More silence.

I don’t look up from my plate and focus strictly on the delicious meal in front of me. 

Love has so many flavours, love has so many shapes.

A general affirmation and an improvisation motto. YES, AND is something that grounds the relationship with myself and the world around me. 

YES being a yes to life, a gratitude for the miracle that is existence. Yes to the mystery that is our lived experience. Yes as the answer to the question, Am I?

The closely following AND, being the building block of growth, of continuity, of our link to eternity. 

This happened, AND that happened. 

The glue that holds together the entire world. The spirit of hope that allows us to traverse the deepest of canyons and not get carried way with the wind at the highest of peaks. 

I was born AND I lived to tell the tale. I am an artist AND I am a human being.

I am capable of good AND evil.

The two words may not be separated, the affirmation lies in their union.

Yes, and…

In improv you quickly learn the power of this mindset. It allows for a level of co-creation and collaboration that NOs and BUTs simply do not provide. It is an opening towards true freedom. 

Towards unity through plurality. Towards Love for the Other.

Only with love in our hearts can we truly accept ourselves and those around us. Only through love will be free.

“I love you friend”

“You’re a liar” 

“I am not lying!”

I find myself shaking from the intensity of the encounter. Not in weakness as my friend suggests, but in deep felt agony. In pain for the inability to see the Other, and for the inability to be seen. A feeling I am all too familiar with.

“Where does this anger come from?” I ask for the thousandth time as I look at my friend. As I look at my father. As I look at the world.

She is no longer able to hear me. He is out of my reach. My words fall on deaf ears. Their eyes are washed with hate.

Hate is the furthest thing from truth, it conceals the truth. Hate blinds us to that which we all really are.

Which is love.

I have spent many, many years of my life living in hate, around hate, with hate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hate was served hot as anger, or lukewarm as cynical advice. Hate eroded my being one day at a time, carving out the deep canyons which I am now thrilled to fill with love. 

Yes I am hurt, yes I am angry AND I still love. And I love some more.

I learned to see hate for what it truly is: love withdrawn. Grasping. The panic we feel when we lose the touch of our beloved. When we lose control. A mouth pushed away from the teat. The limbo state you experience as you hover back above indifference.

Are we just another spec of dust?

Am I worthy of love?

Yes, you are.

Hate is the righteous war on Love. The greatest fear of hate is to be found out as love. 

All that being said, we should not confuse the acts of hate for love. Not at all. Much like a razor blade left behind at a gruesome suicide may not be seen as a shaving tool.

A murder weapon, hate destroys blindly in an attempt to conceal love.

It is violence done onto ourselves. First and foremost. And through that it contributes to the eroding awareness of plurality in unity. It assumes unity solely in the Ego. 

In you, in your righteousness. Sadistic solipsism. 

The God-complex. The desperate grasping for power. Paranoia.

Hate has no destination, but even worse, the journey is a curse too. 

Until you shed some light on the vastness of plurality, you will continue to suffer, alone.

Heaven and hell are real, they exist right here on earth, and we create them.

Until we learn to sit with those we disagree with, with those we deem beneath us, not worth our time. Until we confront the plurality of our unity we cannot live in harmony. Everything will be an escaping from. 

Everything will be black and white.

But neither is it grey. No. The landscape that spans between black and white, contains our entire universe. The refraction of light on its path to and from darkness, is the space we are blessed to explore the rest of our lives. 

A kaleidoscope we hold firmly in our hands as we look out at the Other with Love.

Sanya - 7/8/2022