The Love Laboratory: Part 1 of 3

Entering the Intentional Friendship Forest

To see a complete overview of The Path, click here.

Excuse me while I pick up the shards of my last failed experiment in the laboratory of love. Fortunately, it was a small explosion, what I now refer to wisely as a learning lesson where no one was badly injured. Of course, as shards were flying and the extent of damage unknown, mid-explosion was not a fond moment. It was terrifying.

                             "violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, 
                          a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.”

That's how Adrienne Rich, American poet, essayist and feminist, talks about love and says we have to earn the "right to use the word love." 

Earn the right to use the word love.

Interesting thought about one of the most overused and least understood words in the English language. We "love" everything: pickles, puppies, Porsches. Shiny red "hearts" are everywhere, looking nothing like the actual organ they honor, and basically meaning nothing. 

Thus, LOVE, perhaps the most transformative power in existence, is reduced to an emoji ... which, by the way, was spawned by the novelist Vladimir Nabokov who thought there should be a written symbol for a smile. A couple of decades later a computer scientist created emoticons which morphed into emojis and contributed to the flood of tiny symbols replacing words, replacing actual experiences of meaningful emotion, creating mere ghosts of the original.

But, I digress. Back to the failed experiment. Years after having explored the normal avenues of love ... dating (online and off), affairs (tepid to torrid), and marriages (divorce to death), a new path appeared, wandering crookedly off into a dark wood. A sign said: Intentional Friendship Forest this way.

"Hmmm ...," I said and stepped onto the path.

"Friendship," I thought, rather ignoring the intentional part, "been there. Safe." From the bushes around me, I thought I heard giggling. "Just the leaves rustling," I mused and continued on, thinking about friends past and present, enjoying the gentle breezes outside the stuffy and scary laboratory of love. This wasn't about real love, merely friendship ... uncomplicated, comfortable, piece of cake.

In the metaphorical world of love, romantic love ... copulation, courtship, coupledom, marriage ... is the prancing show horse, all beribboned and shiny, while friendship is the sweaty workhorse with barn muck on his shoes. We give friendship a pat on our way to the big arena, the real show of balloon-festooned and capital-lettered LOVE.

We call our partners in the big arena: spouse, husband, wife, lover, paramour, life partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, darling, sweetheart, beloved. Without such a partner, we call ourselves: single. We think of ourselves as "alone." The supportive playmates and people of our lives, the workhorses, are simply deemed "friends," to be counted in numbers on our Facebook profile.

With these thoughts, I wandered aimlessly onto the forest path and after awhile, met another wanderer who was cute, interesting and interested. Conversation flowed. Trust grew. Soon though, confusion grass sprouted, grew tall, obscured the path.

"This can't be friendship," I thought. "Too big, too dramatic. This must be LOVE ... real love, happily ever after stuff." I began to weave cloud fantasies into future castles.

Not long thereafter, the overheated beaker exploded.

(to be continued)

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