I have been thinking a lot about Shakespeare. I asked my daughter who has recently read several of his plays which one was the one where he loves her but she loves another and that other loves yet another? We could not decide if it was A Midsummers Night Dream, or The Twelfth Night.
With a quick search I came across the notes on Twelfth Night. "Love as a Cause of Suffering" was written atop, "Twelfth Night is a romantic comedy."
Suffering and comedy hardly seem compatible.
In the play love is described as everything from a plague to a desperation that may lead to violent acts.
Although the play goes in to a more interesting question of gender, I am going to stick with the main theme of love.
Love can be a plague. It can be desperate in nature. A plague in the sense that it overtakes your physical reactions. Heart pounding, stomach flipping about like a fish, cold sweats, and other human reactions that we do not always have control over.
Love can also be desperate. Everyone has seen the shows of countless crimes committed in the name of love. But what if, for just one time, the lovers actually turn toward each other and feel the same thing for one another instead of feeling it for someone else?
Their coming together would be a desperate act of submission to their feelings and a giving in to the anguish of love. Their kisses would almost be painful because they are so intense and perfectly received.
"It is hopeless, she does not love me, and I love her, and she loves someone else,"
Words I have heard today as I have sat and been witness to a Shakespearean love triangle.
Hopeless? No, far from it. Just being able to love at all speaks of hope. The fact that the love is unrequited is painful yes, but that love was bloomed in the first place is hopeful. Love can not blossom unless it stems from fertile ground.
Even my own heart, which I try to convince myself daily has been long uprooted and dead, still beats. Still wants another heart to beat in unison with mine.
There is pain in love. Anyone who has ever been in love can tell you this. Even if the hearts beat together there is still pain. Loving someone may cause damage on a residual scale. The loss of a childhood friend who wanted the same love as you. The pain of jealousy that may occur. The pain of fear that the love may not last.
I believe love is the reason we exist. Like anything else it takes practice, patience, perseverance. I may have to remind myself of this every now and again.
Whether I am the role of therapist to a Twelfth Night saga, a leading role, or just part of the audience, I remind myself daily that love may cause pain, but it is such an exquisite and intoxicating pain that if all the planets align, turns in to the best feeling. Like laying down in the grass and taking in the sky, we open our hearts to the elements. Hoping to be filled with stars knowing it may rain instead.
What a powerful and hopeful thing this thing called love is.
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