I fell in love with London. London was beautiful, I could sit there and stare at it for hours. What I love most about it, is the fact that it's not perpendicular. I'm not looking at streets that are made up entirely of right angles, but a city that breathes, and has a bit of a rhythm to the way the streets are laid out. You have to move with it, and interact with it like you do a human being. If you're not appreciating it and learning to understand the rhythm, you'll be lost 10 feet from where you need to be. It's the type of place where you'll always learn something new about it, and if you don't appreciate it for what it's worth, you'll be out of tune and perpetually lost. It's not a city you can fight, or make work for you, but a city you have to breathe with.
I think that's part of the reason I endeavored to make this pilgrimmage: simply, to breathe, and to learn to listen. To be able to listen to something, a person or a city or a culture, and to see it for what it really is, instead of merely what I would like to see it as. And perhaps, to fall in love with the things and the people of this world, learning to appreciate them without demanding they be just like me. Because that's not really loving something, is it?
To conquer a thing or a place, and to fully know it, as in have all the facts, is to limit and kill the relationship you could have with it. We cling to predictability, but what we really fall in love with is something that breathes, that can still surprise you even after years of being in touch with it. When we're really honest with ourselves, we love to discover new things we've never before known about the things of our affection. Why? Because love, when truly authentic, bring us beyond ourselves.
It requires us to breathe with that which we are learning to love, and is rarely a black and white interaction. It is not a "fill in the blank", mathematical, "always the same process and result" kind of situation. To love a city, a person, an object, anything, requires that you dance with it. Give way to when it stumbles, understand how the imperfections and mistakes add to the beauty and allure of that which you love. After all, we appreciate the handicaps because they invite us into a kind of unique connection with it. You enjoy the give and take. Of course we find imperfections in all people, places, etc. We know nothing is perfect. You know the city doesn't make sense here, or this person has this flaw, or that car you love so much has trouble starting unless you turn something this specific way. But knowing that makes you appreciate it a little bit more, especially because not everyone is privy to this information, and it becomes a kind of inside bit of information, giving you new depth to your interaction that not everyone has. It is a bit of a personal triumph to have found these imperfections, and a great treasure, because few know this thing as well as you do now.
There is something very beautiful about falling in love with a person, a thing, or a place. (By love I am referring to the unconditional sense, which the Greeks call 'agape'.) To authentically love, is not to seek control, or a mirror image of oneself. It is simply to yearn to know that which we love more deeply. To love, it drives us to put ourselves aside and understand the rhythm and way that which we love works. We step beyond ourselves, and let this thing that we love (whether it be a city or a person) teach us something about the world, the way it works, and the way life looks through a different lens.
If we wish to love, it must bring us beyond ourselves. Otherwise, we can only go so far as to love a reflection of ourselves we've projected on the world. We will never be able to truly and authentically love the things and people of this world if we do not learn to dance with them, to breathe with them, and to appreciate the vices and virtues as they work together to create something magical.
So as I sit in London, in Aberdeen, in Edinburgh, in a number of other cities on my journey, and in the presence of all the fascinating people I hope to meet, I'm hoping they'll teach me something about the world I couldn't see on my own or without their perspective. I hope, in my short time in these cities and with these people, that I will learn to see the world through new eyes, and be brought beyond myself. Because I think it's important we learn what it means to love each other unconditionally, 'agape' style. Let us start by listening.
-S
“When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.” –D.H. Lawrence
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