The mystery of love

Something’s been on my mind since late last night.

I was struggling within myself and suddenly, out of nowhere, something popped up and sprang in my face and gave me a kiss so quick it came all out of the blue.

It reminded me of a girl I used to know, who asked me for a cigarette once in the local pub. I rolled her one, and told her she could not have it yet. Then from nowhere she sprang up and kissed me on the cheek. That felt like more, I liked it. And so, because of a stupid cigarette she wanted, we made a habit of giving kisses once awhile.

Another friend I used to know, when she met me, she always gave me a kiss on my lips. She was just a friend, but I thought maybe she wanted to be something more. That is the thing with kisses, they always make us think. They make us wonder, like the stars.

They make us dream, and there is a part of us that is really strong, and that is opposing that. It is fighting that. Like you can imagine a little boy on a schoolyard playground who gets his first kiss unsuspectingly from some daring girl, and who fights the feeling of being kissed. He wipes his cheek, he says it’s dirty, and he runs away.

Is it shyness?

Is it resistance?

Isn’t it adorable?

This little boy who feels awkward because of a kiss, and maybe compensates by playing soccer really hard and not ever looking back at the girl, the culprit, the guilty one, who was so daring as to out of nowhere give him a kiss.

Is it different when we grow up? Do kisses not still make us feel awkward? Do we not resist them, playfully perhaps, jokingly perhaps, adorably perhaps?

We are so powerless face to face with a kiss, we are so small in the face of love.

It catches us by surprise, it tells us something we weren’t expecting to hear.

And we don’t know what to think of it.

I don’t think we really want to think about it.

We want to forget it, we want to go on with what we’re doing.

And never mind, and move on, pretend it never happened.

But it catches up on us, it stays with us, sometimes it comes back, the kiss, and we wonder, just like looking at the stars. We wonder about a kiss.

In psychoanalysis, it is said that sexuality is traumatic, it is a hole around which the words seem to circle, but they cannot cover it. There are no words to describe love, there are no words that can describe a kiss. It is the Real, it is the original mystery. In the heart and core of the psyche, there is a black hole, a lack of words. The unspeakable, passion.

And so we find it strange, we joke about it, we play hard to get and we are tougher. We are no pussies, we are no wimps. We have no business with love. We play soccer really hard on the schoolyard playground, we study like serious students, we butcher ourselves at the gym.

Hell, we even leave our wives behind and go play hero in a distant warzone.

We have no time for love.

But on the schoolyard playground, when no one’s watching and no ball is coming your way, the kiss comes back, when we are studying hard we think of all the money we will make with our college degree and how we can then buy gifts for our wife and children, when we are at the gym, we are thinking about just the kiss to go with that sexy body we are building. And in the warzone, we keep our letters and our pictures of the ones we left behind as close to our hearts as possible.

We are boys, we cannot take a kiss. We play, we study, we fight, and we joke about love. And joking about it, we are so thankful it’s there. We are big guys maybe, but it’s just a kiss that made us that.

Before we started to think, before we started to fight and train and study, there was a kiss. And then the resistance came, then the questions came. Why was that? What’s that for? Where does it come from? Why is it there?

Why did she kiss me?

What is she saying?

What does she mean by that?

And you generate a thousand questions from one small kiss.

Love is a mystery.

Like the universe.

Why is it there?

We are more comfortable being serious, being hard headed businessmen, being slave traders, environmental polluters, maiming soldiers, flexing our muscles and looking in the mirror for assurance. We prefer to be in control, we prefer certainty and predictability. We don’t want our whole lives turned upside down and thrown into chaos by some kiss.

It could make us stop, and think, and we would never find an answer.

Because there is no answer, there is no solution, there is no reason and there is no certainty. It is like winning the lottery perhaps, it comes out of nowhere. Bam, you’ve just been kissed.

Why does love exist, why are we loved?

Do we deserve it? Is it our pearl white smile, our giant bank account, is it the circumference of our upper arms? Is it because we write great poems, or because we are the coolest rapper on the street?

There is no reason, there is no predicting it, there is no controlling it.

It just is, it’s just there, like the stars.

Love is there and we have to live with it.

Even if we don’t know why or where it came from, even if we wipe our cheeks and joke about it, we love love. Even if we spit out our saliva after having been kissed by surprise, we still wonder, and maybe we like it. Maybe we like the surprise, maybe we like the love, the kiss, the stars, the unpredictability.

I believe in the heart of every rough ’n’ tough soldier, there is boy thinking about a kiss, I believe in every serious college student, there is a teenager in love wanting romance forever, I believe in every boy running away from a daring girl on the schoolyard playground, there is a heart that wants to come back for more.

But we are serious, we are rough ‘n’ tough, we are sacred and devoted. We crave certainty, security, laws and predictability. We cannot deal with a surprise, we cannot live with something that just exists for no reason. We need answers, not just a kiss.

The last thing we need really, is another kiss.

It turns things upside down, it catches us by surprise, it throws things around and breaks things apart.

Isn’t it worth a thought really, considering the wars and the businesses, all of the tough guys, soldiers, businessmen, that in the heart, at the very center of all our affaires, there is just a kiss. A kiss and the question of being loved.

And we who cannot answer it.