Ordinary Love
In this great journey called life, there are very few certain truths besides that we all get born and we all die. In between is a carte blanche. As an artist of your own life, each one of us is armed with the ability to love and experience love. Hopefully, every living being is fortunate enough to know that supreme feeling.
I am happily married and I have the most beautiful and wonderful wife. Saying so sounds like a cliche and by its definition cliche should be ordinary. That is perfectly fine. Love as a “cold passion” as Yeats called it, or even better “Ordinary love” as Bono calls it, is where you live love and love lives you, throughout many trials of understanding, commitment, flexibility, compromise and most of all patience.
Above all, what I love the most in our relationship is the ability to learn from each other, to supplement deficiencies, build upon our strengths, make each other better every day…. This is a shampoo work in progress – lengthening, brushing and strengthening- that requires constant focus. To cite Daphne de Marneffe from her book The Rough Patch,’ marriage’s chief promise is a decades-long exploration of a distinct being whose contour and interior you have yet to truly know’.
Love to me is a transcendental neverending journey. Possibilities to cherish it are endless. However, there is no better place for love than our own bed. It is a sanctuary: a place of the highest importance where our bodies and feelings can be completely stripped off and naked, exposed in its fragility but magnificently strong in its beauty. This is where we can reach each other anytime.
Often, I find myself observing my wife without her knowing it. Just ordinary situations when she reads a book or sews a new creation, or when she brushes hair, or when she dresses. Among all those moments, my favorite husband creep is when she sleeps. It is just an ordinary moment of life that I find spectacular. I guess it is called to be in love, or to love someone.
To be fair and not to paint an idyllic picture of our love, there are challenging moments of our relationship when arguments arise. Our arguing personalities are different. I explode fast and fade out fast, while she explodes slowly but damn, she lasts for the longest time. These moments are the most testing ones, the nerves are sharp and the blood is boiling. Most of time, she is right and I accept it.
Afterward, sex is better and it heals everything. It’s just an ordinary love and I can’t get enough of it.
We are tough enough to enjoy it.
