LOVE AND TIME
This blog is a repeat from 2020. After reviewing some previous February blogs, this one is really sticking in my mind. Maybe it is because now i sense my time as being more finite. A diagnosis of an incurable disease will do that to you.
In 2020 I noticed a Valentine's Card, which I did end up buying, that had a front picture of a dinosaur munching on some roses, with the line: “I will love you until the end of time …. “ On the inside, it added: “And a little longer.”
It made me think about the idea of the timeless nature of love.
With time things age. Age suggests older, worn, changed and perhaps weaker or dissipating. It suggests something tangible. Time can also suggest maturing, blooming, coming from nascent to “full blossom” so to speak. Positive of course, and yet there will be a fading.
Love though is of a different nature. Yes, it can be viewed in the context of a traditional, clock based time. How ‘long’ does it take to fall in love? When do you ‘know’ that you are really in love? Is it possible to fall out of love? These are all in my sensibility traditional clock related time references.
Love though also exits outside of time. A love that always is and always will be. It sounds like, I know, a religious view of the divine which transcends the time of nature; and maybe that is so. Maybe love is in fact just that, something that transcends the natural world. Unique. A binding of breath and soul of people into an existential oneness.
The challenge to finding this type of love is itself time related. The elements of concrete nature. The human condition. Our own seeking to understand and control and be in charge.
In The Actual Dance, the play and book, contain the line: “I don’t think two 20 years old kids really understood what love meant.” That was when Susan and I decided to get married. In 1965. And yes, during these many years we both went though our own efforts to be in control, to understand and know in a more concrete way what exactly life and love is about.
We have through our lived experience begun to understand the different nature of “what love really means.” The discovery of that essence that makes us part of the other. I have had to think about these ideas now in the context of my current condition == "dementia" -- Alzheimer's
My assessment is that Love is cumulative, and non-exclusive, and that it never ends. It just expands.
So yes, there is a mystery to love. Here is the poem I wrote.
A Little Longer
I wonder if time can ever end
Time not measured by a clock
The time that exists inside of US
The US of you and me
A love that is and was and always will
The love that lasts to the end of time
And then a little longer
(c)Samuel A Smon 2020
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"The Actual Dance is a beautiful, powerful and timeless in its messages." --James Fallows, Award-winning author, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.
"This startling memoir is a celebration of love and hope ..." Rabbi Naamah Kelman
Donate here
"The Actual Dance is a beautiful, powerful and timeless in its messages." --James Fallows, Award-winning author, national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly.
"This startling memoir is a celebration of love and hope ..." Rabbi Naamah Kelman
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