"Love is the delightful interval between meeting a beautiful girl...

and discovering that she looks like a haddock."
-- John Barrymore (1882-1942)


So, it's love you want to hear about, is it?

Funny thing about that. The people who are scrambling to hear about love are often the people who don't have it. I'm talking about romantic love now, not the other kinds. It's always seemed to me that twice-burned and unlucky people are always clammoring to hear more about love. They work it over in their minds; they're haunted by thoughts. I vacationed at that pond, so I'm familiar with the idea.

Though I don't think any of them will admit it (and I'm sure I wouldn't), there is a certain comfort in being unhappy in love. It provides a stable compass to move by. Like a magnet, it promotes action just by "being". We love to hear stories of relationships gone right, ones gone wrong, ones indifferent. Because to people who don't receive romantic love, it's the most important thing in the world.

It's a natural impulse. We're wired to want that which we don't posess. That's the strange thing about love. Once we have it, we barely even think about it. It simply "is". It is the same reliable constant. Only this time, instead of causing people to pursue it to the horizon like a will o' the wisp, it is more like the timbers that form the frame of a house. Hidden behind the walls, they exist to prop up the roof and give the home shape. And, barring a disaster, you don't need to give them any thought for them to support your lovely dwelling place.

I think people try to hard to find and make love. Knowing a little about this (as I do most many things), I believe that it's wasted energy. When it comes, you'll know, because you won't know. True love is trust and reliability. It takes you by suprise when someone calls you on it, because you've already accepted it.

So I'll go against the conventional wisdom and say the best way to know you're in love is when someone else tells you so. And not tells in the "forces you" sense, but more like "pointing out." Someone makes it available for you to put two and two together.

Or anyway, that's how it works for me.