Just love

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Kahlil Gibran

Source: stylefrizz.com via Iulia on Pinterest

Yesterday I spent a few hours at the Design Museum. I've wanted to see the Christian Laboutin's exhibition for a long time and yesterday, after my run which always takes my by the Design Museum, I was drawn inside. I've enjoyed it a lot. Looking at shoes that are more than just things you put on your feet but statements of cultural, sexual or emotional identity was a highly rewarding experience. Especially when I got close to the 'Love' shoes of the Pigalle Collection. They had me mesmerised. There I was looking at these shoes for minutes (or maybe hours?) and thinking about this tiny little word stitched across two shoes. One shoe. Another shoe. Love... I felt they were trying to tell me something. That it takes two 'shoes' to make one 'love'.

It's funny how love's been poking its head into my life lately. Phrases and quotes I come across, plays I see, exhibitions I visit, they're all screaming love at me! 'The mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death' cried Salome in the opera I went to see last Saturday, 'If love was a disease would you take the cure?' was the book I just finished reading (Delirium by Lauren Oliver) asking me. 'The hunger for love is greater than the hunger for bread' was Mother Theresa's opinion which I used in one of my older posts when I was talking about the boy with the bread. And now the Love shoes. But what's even more interesting is that today I saw a swan, a single, lost swan on the Thames in an area which was muddy a few days before. Now the waters looked like they were starting to rise and that swan was just there floating on the muddy waters, randomly and almost surreal. I've never seen swans on Thames before, it seems like she somehow got lost and ended up on that bit of the river. It suddenly occurred to me that swans mate for life and this was a lonely swan. Was she me?... Have I somehow ended up alone in muddy waters?

Maybe I'm done with loving just myself. I suddenly have this urge to share my love with somebody else, take the word love and stretch it over another shoe, who is just like me only slightly bit different, and start walking together. Because 'love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction'  (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)  and doesn't 'love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other' (Rainer Maria Rilke)?

I'm done with being afraid too. I'm done with being cynical, with expecting the worst, with being distrustful of men, with sabotaging myself over and over again. I am ready to just love. And do nothing but. 'I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love' said Mother Teresa and I believe her. The only cure for fear is love and I am not going to be afraid anymore. I've been too deep down in the swamps, swimming in muddy waters, tortured by fear, feeling lonely and lost. 'A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave' (Mahatma Gandhi) and I am no coward.

It's shocking how loveless modern life can be. It's almost as if we are afraid to say the word, like it's going to kill us if we admit we are searching for love. In the past, I would never speak of love when I spoke of a man. I would call it dating, having a casual relationship with a like minded adult, being friends or whatever else. I never said I loved a man before but that wouldn't be right because in reality I do love every man that has been, is and will be in my life for having loved me or hurt me equally. Because they've made me who I am today.

'And think not you can Direct the course of love, For love, If it finds you worthy, Directs your course' 
Kahlil Gibran