We Must Be Unreasonable About Love

We must be unreasonable about mercy. We must give mercy away, hurl it towards each other, even when we can’t have mercy on ourselves.

We must want a witness, a witness that locks eyes and just speaks and hears directly from the heart, the very bones of each other, as if our hearts are walkie-talkies, and we can speak freely, the freest, silently, from within us, just by staring, even from across a crowded room, or in the midst of crisis, or when words have lost their meaning.

We must crave touch like a food source; we must speak touch like a second language.

We must understand that we will never happen again.

We must touch with this knowing; every day our bodies shift, every day our bodies only happen once, every day will be the last day we look exactly like this. We must touch like our bodies are rivers; where we dive in will never be where we surface.

We must be otherworldly brave. We must be the kind of courageous that legends are made of, must be willing to be the most naked possible, the most de-shelled and exposed, the most un-armed and bare, the most open and real – what taking off our clothes can only mildly point to.

We must want to be happy more than right, whatever “right” means. We must understand that “right” is too expensive, is too high a price to pay; “right” is never worth joy’s sacrifice.

We must know, as in grasp, as in experience directly in the body, from our very bones, that life is short, so returning to love isn’t an ideal, or a new year’s resolution, or what happens on Sunday, or once we’ve been wrung out by arguing, exhausted by stress and pain. The return to love can’t be via exhaustion; the surrender to love can’t come second hand.

We must desire returning to love as an everyday priority like drinking water or breathing.

We must want to laugh, to bring levity when levity is least expected but most needed. We must want to get to that point when the laughing clears out the lungs, leaves us coughing, our eyes all watery, and those odd and too infrequently used stomach muscles aching.

We must want to walk each other through where we are most afraid, not judging or fixing or trying to heal or change. Just walking with each other, side by side through the fear as we face it.

We must love each other, the very bones of us, and not ask for proof, or evidence, or reasons why we’re worthy of that love.

We must be inspired by a vision, a clarity of contribution, a way of serving this world with soul.

We must be living in the body in a way that comes from the truth that the body is the soul’s chance to be here.

We must be embodied, fully, wanting to exist intensely, to feel deeply, to be present to all that’s possible. We must be at the stage in life of what’s next. What’s after the search for self, the self-harm, the dissociation, the constant leaving and disembodying, the constant disappearing acts.

We must be at the stage of life that is focused on what happens after the soul is found. We must want to answer – what do we do with our freed self? What do we do with our freed selves together? How do we each support each other’s own union? What do we do with all this gold? With all this honey? How do we now serve the world? What will be our shared legacy of love?

We must be unreasonable about love.

We must give and give and give love recklessly, irrationally, knowing it’s the only inexhaustible resource, knowing the well can never run dry, because the source of love comes from within us but is always more than us.

We must know that the source of love is like an old-school pirate’s treasure-chest, that sits hidden in the heart and that is constantly replenished if we only just close our eyes and let it.

We must want more for each other than we’ve ever managed to want for ourselves.

With only more love,
​M.