Love does not know time
by Jason Swaffield – an inspired communication about time, loss and the power of love.
Time. It is such a inexorable thing. It stretches out forever, it seems. And yet, when you want it to last it takes everything away from you. You want it to just stop, to cease moving, so the sadness can be staved away and the love can remain. But this is not what time does. It relentlessly, mindlessly carries forth.
You can’t be angry with it, it serves no purpose but to damage yourself. Time does reflect to us, though, what matters. I might say, ‘that is something to be grateful for’, but when the reflection is far too real and far too raw, it seems that gratitude is the farthest thing from my heart. Perhaps begrudging respect. Humility. The saying, “It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all” is so absolutely true. I would prefer a philosophy with a kinder range of options, though.
But nevertheless, that is not the nature of time. And when one is in singularity, with a one-way appreciation of events, that inexorable feeling just keeps going, forcing you to have to adapt and cope, or the tide of events will sweep you under.
Because that is what love is like within time, something that carries you along with it and takes you to places you never thought you could reach, or never imagined existed. And when it comes, when ‘time’ leaves you feeling stranded on the shoreline and carries love away with it, out of your grasp, it looks back at you with an eternal glance, daring you to never forget, to never let go, to always remember. Because time is not a friend. Not at all.
But if we can learn something from this perpetrator of unwanted events and passing moments, it is that it did not bring love into our lives, it merely swept us up in what we already knew was inside us already. It just eroded the facade that we all carry. And that facade is the image that love is not the most important thing in our lives. In our existence. In a moment, it reminded us that time is not a powerful thing to be resented and feared, it is just a memory carrier.
The most important thing is that it cannot carry any memory away, or erode any feeling, or leave you standing anywhere you don’t want to stand. It is powerless. For all its bravado, it is as meaningless as the illusion it tries to convince us of.
But rest assured, when you know this and look time directly in the face, right between the eyes, it will back down. Because you are the master of your love. Both for yourself, and the love you hold for others. You control your love, and what you do with it. Anything else is allowing time to own what is rightfully yours.
So don’t despair when you feel the loss of love. Don’t feel sad beyond repair when you feel broken and battered, ripped and torn apart. Don’t give in. Just know that it was your ability to love that got you there in the first place. That is what allowed you to ride the river, and not drop to the bottom like a dead, unfeeling weight.
It was your remembering of the love you hold within you that carried you all the way to right now. And your love now that embraces and carries with you the feelings you have, right now. Without love, you cannot be who you are. Without you, love has no one to carry it.
So carry love with you with every step. Carry as much as you can, wherever you can. Don’t ever stop, because if you do, time wins. Because time, remember, tries to convince you that it is in control of what begins and what ends.
It is up to us to show it differently, until we draw our last breath and return to the greater love that allowed us to understand personal love in the first place.
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