My Lucid Reality

Give me breath to tell a tale that is long in the telling, and a burden to be heard.  It is of love, the power of love, and my desire to demonstrate such a noble and true feeling to it’s most true and noble state.  I have heard people say “I cannot live without you.” And to me… this is not love, the more noble feeling of love I hope is what I feel, which I shall hereafter proclaim with words that cannot do the subject justice.

How do I love thee?  A poem we’ve heard the beginning of a thousand times but never fully explored.

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,

I shall but love thee better after death.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

When I think of how I love you, I think of love as the highest virtue that the human race possesses, it’s a manifestation of everything good that I see in you, the thoughts that you bring to my mind, the feelings that cause me to achieve beyond anything which I could aim for on my own.  It is because of my love for you that I achieve.  I am amazing because I know that you are.  I work towards my greatest potential because I see you and admire so many things about you.  Instead of the plea “I would die without you” I cry out that because of you I live, and if I lost you tomorrow, I would live and with my every breath try harder to achieve my potential, a star that lights the way is no less bright by light of day.

A tribute of my love is not my sitting in squalor as I show that through my worthlessness you are great, but it’s through my greatness that I show you that my love in you is not misplaced.  This is to say that for you to love someone no matter their limited capabilities is a charity, but for you to have the love of someone who can and will reach the stars is no less than you deserve.

Shakespear mentions love as being eternal, that once again, the power of death shall not divide us, shall I lose you the light of your eyes will still shine through the colors of the woods, the light in the star filled sky, I see your beauty all around me, and that cannot cease.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade

Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this and this gives life to thee.”

William Shakespear – Sonnet #18

Love lifts us up where we belong

In the symposium by Plato there is a conversation with Aristophanes where the theory of soul-mates takes full light and strength.  One of my most favorite definition of a soul-mate is that of a soul, falling from heaven, divides in two and spends the rest of it’s eternity looking for it’s other half.  According to Aristophanes at the time of creation there was no man and women but the Androgynies’ having four arms, four legs, and one head with two faces it had the power to challenge the gods, in their wrath they devised a plan to limit their power by separating them into two beings, a man, and a women.  Together we have the power to overthrow the universe and stand on Mount Olympus.

This is what I mean when I say I love you, it is that with you I am stronger, and because of you I am great, and that without you I shall move forward because you did not love me out of sympathy, but as a reflection of the greatness that you yourself possess.

Please comment, or at the very least point me in a good direction for pictures that better represent what I’m trying to say.

Bibliography

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The philosophy of Ayn Rand

William Shakespear, Sonnet #18

Symposium by Plato – Conversation with Aristophanes