Unrequited
Do you know what the most common form of love is?
You might guess, platonic, or romantic. Or if you’ve been reading the five love languages, maybe you’d assume physical love, or gift giving, or quality time.
The truth is a simple sadness: The most common love is unrequited.
I know, it sounds as though my inner emo is coming out, but I actually think this is kind of beautiful.
You meet a girl, right? She’s pretty and funny and when she talks, about anything really, the world seems to go in slow motion, you notice the way light refracts differently through her hair in the sunset and that she smells good. Like really good. You go on dates and talk about life and goals and everything magical and mundane in breathless adoration for each other.
It’s great right?
The feeling you get in your stomach when the universe is clicking into place, just for you, is one of the most profound and intrinsically human experiences available to us. I think that it’s rarity is perhaps the coolest part.
More often, we see the girl, and try to match eyes. She waves and we wave back to the horrifying realization that her greeting was intended for the friend behind you. Or perhaps you found a guy that you really dig, and manage to get that date, maybe several. You find a rhythm, which isn’t easy to do and in that awkward dance of dinners and bowling and cute walks in the evening, you believe sincerely that you found someone. But he doesn’t feel that same energy. You’re nice and all, but it’s just not working.
You say “tomato” he says “I’d like to see other people”. Or whatever.
If not for those moments, that feeling of elation followed so closely by it’s kissing cousin of devastation, we would be so much less capable of appreciating the magnitude and wonder of mutual affection.
When someone sees beyond your instagram painted visage and somehow manages to connect with your soul, when they see the ugly and the plain, and the honest, open truth of you and don’t look away, that’s as close as we really get to heaven down here.
There’s a quote, perhaps my favorite, from Rothfuss in The Wise Man’s fear. He says:
“In many ways, unwise love is the truest love. Anyone can love a thing because. That's as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. To know the flaws and love them too. That is rare and pure and perfect.”
I film love and it’s many wonderful promises for a living. I was asked recently if it was difficult to work weddings while struggling to date in my own personal life, and….no, but also….more honestly, yes. Absolutely.
I mean, I don’t think about it alot, but there’s a different kind of loneliness that strikes when editing a love story of a beautiful couple while drinking whiskey in an empty house, with the sounds of a computer fan and clicking keyboard providing the only company.
It’s that sadness, or perhaps more accurately, that hollowness, that makes discovering the right person so much more profound. When the resounding echoes of your life find a place in which they can finally be still. The comfort and joy we realize in another person that, through no small twists of fate, returns your attraction is a remarkably rare and wonderful feeling.
To be honest, my point in all of this has very little to do with love. I’m certainly in no position to offer advice on that front anyway. Rather, I think I want to slow down and appreciate the less beautiful and unromantic pieces of living.
I’m not directing this movie. And though it pains me to admit it, I’m not the star in anyone else’s film but mine. So to ignore or begrudge the parts that aren’t fun and cute and filling my insides with butterflies is to disregard the broader strokes of the story. Things are tough for everyone right now, maybe the best response is to sit with that feeling a little while. Understand it.
The absence of anything makes it’s discovery all the more important.
Just like love, life is full of unreturned energy.
Until it isn’t.
I hope you weather the storm and I hope you find a heart that matches your own. Cause you’re a badass, and I probably love you.