Find Your Apocalypse

I plead guilty. Charges: Hypocrisy.

You see, all my life I've ricocheted between two extremes. Sometimes, I'm a hopeless romantic, completely in love with the idea of love; and other times, I'm the harshest critic, the biggest cynic, equating what people call love with mere neurochemistry. But today, when the closest we can go to somebody we adore is six feet, or the only way we can see them is across a screen, my former self is much more dominant. Which is why, I'm here to lament. Lament about what the world, what we have reduced love to.

I look around, and I see, as I'm sure you do too, our parents and other folks, who have been married for some 30 odd years, and I'm left wondering, why can't we as a generation hold on to love for as much as 30 days. Somewhere along swiping right and Netflixing to chill, we've given our love an expiration date. Of course, I'm not saying all of their years were blissful, neither am I saying all of our days are superficial. But, answer me this - when was the last time you felt the same warmth as when watching a 60-year old couple dancing in their jammies to no music?

It took me a while to figure it out, why are so many of us hardwired this way. But eventually, it all boiled down to fear, just like the other things in life. And of course we're afraid of love, somebody could make you feel like you're on top of the world, and that's a very long way to fall. So we hide. We hide behind humour and sarcasm and our too-cool-for-you attitudes, perpetually afraid that somebody might want to peel back the layers and get real for once. Nobody knows better than me how difficult it can be to expose your vulnerabilities and insecurities, to bare your soul, having no shields up. But, it sounds like a good trade to find that one person, your person. The one who steadies you and stirs you, all at once. Somebody who tells you they could start a war for you. Somebody who looks at you with such fervor that you have to avert your eyes, lest you implode with a paroxysm of feelings you've never felt before. Not because you need the external validation, but because they can't help but do those things, like they'd want to remind you how loved you are, every moment of every day, even if it's the last thing they do.

So, don't sell yourself short. Don't jump into liaisons you know you don't intend on keeping. I don't mean to preach, or to tell anybody out there how to spend their lives. Bed-hopping might be a different kind of fun altogether that I might know nothing about. All I hope to do here is open you to the possibility of love, of a happily-ever-after that most people spend their lifetimes searching for. Don't settle for that 2AM romance, find the kind of love that burns as bright as the noon sun. That's the only love worth hurting for. Hell, that's the only love worth loving for.