What We Talk About When We Talk About Love ? ...

“You guys,” Terri said. “Stop that now. You’re making me sick. You’re still on the honeymoon, for God’s sake. You’re still gaga, for crying out loud. Just wait. How long have you been together now? How long has it been? A year? Longer than a year?”

“Going on a year and a half, ” Laura said, flushed and smiling.

“Oh, now,” Terri said. “Wait awhile.”

She held her drink and gazed at Laura.

“I’m only kidding,” Terri said.

Raymond Carver

Today I’ve talked with a child. I have no idea from where to start, how to explain to him the things that I know, how to save his soul. When I was listening to him, I was thinking of Carver’s lines, from What We Talk about When We Talk about Love. Love. How can I explain to him what love is all about?

I am a Carver thinker. Reality emptied of lyrical stuff, reality naked of sentimentalism, of dreams, of forever fairytales. And this reality is being made more powerful, much more stronger, ironically, by its nakedness. Few weeks ago I talked with a friend about marriage and children. She doesn’t want to hear about them right now, but she agreed with me.  Although marriage is a piece of paper and the real marriage is about real feelings, build up in TIME, I advised her to wait. How much time do you need to really know a person, to really know yourself? Beginnings are always nice, sweet, and beautiful. And when I talk about beginnings, I’m not talking about the first months of a relationship, the first butterflies, when you cannot see or talk with anyone else, because your mind is set only on your love, but I’m talking about the first years. Every relation had a beautiful beginning, from those few people who grew older together, to those who divorced, screamed, hit each other, to those people who identify themselves in lines such as “Just gonna stand there/And watch me burn, But that’s alright/Because I like the way it hurts/Just gonna stand there/And hear me cry/Because that’s alright/Because I love the way you lie.” Are these people sane or insane to love PAIN?

So yes, I really disagree with people that talk about marriage after they know each other for a year and a half. I told her that if I were her, I would wait for at least three years, because this is me, and REASON should take control a little bit for such a huge step. Think of the people around you. You think that you’re the only one who felt like this, but ALL the persons – from parents, grandparents to friends – felt the same as you. Because we are all human beings and because for all of them, LOVE had promised a better life and not destruction. Destruction of souls, homes, and bodies. And because in time, for all your love, for all your feelings and for your lack of cold thinking, someone else would suffer. And now I’m talking about that child that I met this morning … how can I explain to him that fairytales does not exist, that people change and are too busy to see, to understand him? How can I make him feel better, not guilty, for all the things that he sees?

I wanted to hug him, but he didn’t let me, as he never lets anyone around him do this. I wanted to soothe him, to make him cry, but all that I could do was to feel his rage. I tried to teach him to give warmth to people that he loves, but when he finally did this, he received coldness, ironic, from those people who scolded him for being too frozen … I don’t want to know what’s inside his soul. And it’s just a child … how fair is the world? How can we judge people being good and bad, when WE create other human beings?! Us, not God. This child should repeat the things that he saw, never understanding his angriness. If he is strong enough, he would take the other road, but what is the price he must pay inside of him for such a decision? And really, honey, I don't think I'm able to handle him on my own.

People are selfish. Too selfish. People feel before they think. And what is worst, they first feel themselves, are thirsty of happiness and blinded by it. Why they just can’t feel the things they do not know, why should things happen to them in order to understand them? We’ve got everything, every feeling, every thought, good and bad, inside ourselves. Why can’t they see, touch this part of their souls? Yes, I think that if we knew each other from the beginning, the Earth would be a Paradise. Meantime, because we’re running after happiness without thinking a little bit of the future, without seeing the people around us, and when we reach this future, we’re too weak to act, to cut the evil, to take life and start over again, to protect our children, the world is just another paradise lost.  

So yes, taking him into account, LISTENING and paying attention to this song, staying in front of such a child, DO tell me how can I tell him that the world is full of colours when he only sees gray, how could I make him smile when he feels the way he feels, how can I teach him to feel LOVE, any kind of love, when he has never received it ... DO tell me, what can I answer when he asks me:" What we talk about when we talk about love?!"