Do you ever wonder about the things you’ve forgotten? Or contemplate something that at one time you possibly thought was very important, but now you can’t remember it at all?

What happens to all those thoughts about everyday things we considered and deemed important from days gone by? Important musings we mulled around inside our heads, thinking at the time that we would never forget them, or the event that spawned them.  Now, of course, we don’t even recall thinking them, much less the experience that prompted them.  From some forgotten point in our past, there surely exists what now seems like someone else’s lifetime that we never experienced at all.

How much have we forgotten, and how much more will we forget, in the times we have left ahead of us?   I realize that these things are best not dwelt upon, but still, I wonder about them, and other such complex aspects of the human condition. For instance, where do you suppose love goes, when it dies?

Was it really love at all? That burning emotion, connection, passion, whatever it was, that two people experienced once upon a time, and shared so single-mindedly, they couldn’t bear to be apart. What happens to that feeling, sensation, or whatever it is, that grabs hold of two hearts in the most uniquely selective and all-consuming interaction ever affecting two people at the same time?

Sometimes it lasts a lifetime, other times, only for a while.  But I wonder, does it really ever go away?  Perhaps discarded love just nestles down somewhere in the nether regions of the brain where all those other forgotten thoughts, suppositions, and daydreams slumber. 

Sometimes it changes into something else entirely, this thing we call love, which, by the way, wears many different costumes. There is motherly love, godly love, fatherly love, brotherly love, spiritual love,  sisterly love, puppy love, young love, marital love, unrequited love, benevolent love, charitable love, platonic love, passionate love, adulterous love. Well, you get the picture.  Whatever cloak it wears, each of the multitudes of love feelings tweaks its own unique place somewhere inside us.

If love is eternal, as they say, then  once it has found its place inside the human psyche, in either the heart or the brain, wherever it is that love dwells,  it remains there forever, leaving its mark.  Or, its scar. 

So,  can love ever truly die, even though it obviously disappears?  Or does it just morph into something else? Something like, say, friendship, or empathy. Or hatred, as is all too often apparent in divorce courts and child custody cases.

I'm thinking love never really dies, but either mellows into platonic familiarity, shrivels up into indifferent obscurity, hides behind regret, or, considering the proverbial thin line between love and hate, rages into that eternal flame of red hot hatred.

And, can love remain the same in any of its forms, til death do us part?  I think not.  I hope not.  In the end, the best kind of love is the one that resembles a piece of the best parts of every form of this most cherished and sought after human emotion, bringing us to a level of contentment only the best-lived life can achieve.

Even the red-hot hatred form love takes in time, will burn out, will cool at best to a manageable little cinder, glowing from time to time to remind the heart of the special affection that once lived there.

That's what I think.

 

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