Little Things

LITTLE THINGS 

I always kind of thought that when you experienced love, you would experience it in that big, bold, life changing way. A part of me always thought that it would be declarative, grand, extravagant. There would be an urgency, a suddenness, a weaving and whirling trail of tell-tale signs. It would be something big, so big that it could only ever be expressed in the most magnificent of actions. It would be booming, brilliant fireworks. It would be streams and scores of shooting stars. It would be gushing electric currents and cataclysmic earthquakes. It would be a waterfall of sound. It would be final, definite, pressing, unrestrained magic and wildness and wonder.

I can't quite find the words to capture the feeling. What I thought it would feel like. These metaphorical explanations are the best I can do. When it comes to love, I've always been looking for the obvious, the big gestures, the certainties. The kind of things that are so... definite. So transparent. So sure. And I'm now starting to realise that yes, love can be expressed through those well known channels. Things like 'I love you', hugs, kisses, sex, holding hands, asking for a number, chatting someone up, telling someone they look beautiful, asking them out on a date. Those expressions we know so well, and automatically associate with love. The way we expect love to be, to look like, to feel like. But I'm now starting to understand, and be amazed by the fact, that love is expressed in a whole wealth of other ways too. 

Even those transition periods that mark a love's progression, from strangers through to partners, I always thought they would be so official and standardised and pointed too. Almost like checking off boxes on a tick list. Everything would be so linear and chronological and expected. Footsteps taken along a pathway cobbled with the same stepping stones. The rules already written. If you want someone to know you love them, do this, do that, then this, and so on. And somehow they will then know. And then you will move onto the next step. And then everything will magically and seamlessly fall into place. And the happy ending will come. But it doesn't really seem to work like that.

Instead, I'm realising that love is something that is gradual and seamless. It is something that slowly burns brighter and brighter until one day, you look around you to find there is nothing but light surrounding you. The darkness has disappeared. Love comes so naturally and easily once you open up your heart to it, and allow those feelings the freedom to exist, to be, to flow and move throughout your body. It also finds its way to you somehow too. To look for love is innate, instinctive, addictive, yet the irony is true. Once you stop your elusive and ambiguous soul searching, and you simply enjoy your life for what it is, focus on loving yourself and those you care about, and realise you are so happy as you are right here, right now, your own individual entity... somehow love finds you. 

It kind of feels like Christmas Eve night when you were a child. When you were worried that Santa wouldn't find you, even though you put out the carrots and the sherry and the 'santa please stop here' sign, and you wrote that lovely letter and made him a Christmas tree out of Hamma beads too. Your parents would reassure you that he'd find his way somehow, but for now you just need to close your eyes and sleep. Dream wonderful, magical dreams. And trust that Santa will come. He will find his way somehow. So you close your eyes. You trust he will come. You stop wondering and analysing and indulging in rational thought. And you innately believe he will find you, you just need to give him time. Then morning comes, you walk tentatively downstairs, push open the door, and there you find everything you ever longed for, dreamed about, wished for. Love arrives a  little bit like that.

I'm also starting to realise that love is expressed on a spectrum, from the most minute to the most magnificent, and everything in between, and that those loving gestures are perhaps the most beautiful, meaningful and pure when in their smallest and simplest forms. Those actions that you would overlook in the blink of an eye. The ones that are so small you often aren't even aware they exist. That they've happened. And that they've happened to you. The subtle changes in the way you feel and act. The expressions you do yourself without even realising. The loving gestures that are masked behind seemingly ordinary actions. To me it is so fascinating, beautiful, humbling, honest. Sometimes I really don't think there could be anything more amazing.

It's that way two people start to find themselves drawn to one another like magnets, or two ends of an invisible piece of thread that never seems to break. It's the way a relationship and connection builds over time, slowly, steadily, gradually, piece by little piece, until one day you realise what you've built between you, and how much it means too. It's the way you jump over obstacles so you can keep running towards the beckoning horizon. It's the way you start to care about somebody, the way you start to appreciate them, the way you start to know them, the way you start to notice all the little wonderful things that make them such a good person, and such a blessing to this world.

It's the way you start to look out for each other, like two guiding lights that will always help you find your way home. It's the way two people start to reach out to one another instinctively, no matter where or when, and transmit all those little actions, signals, words, looks, that all seem to code for the message: I care about you, and I know I don't have to, but I do, and I just wanted you to know that. It's the way you worry that they haven't received the message, and the moment you realised they have. They know. It's the inexplicable affinity, the companionship, the adventure. It's that feeling that you're stood right on the cusp of magic and possibility and meaning and a cosmic galaxy full of twinkling stars, and you're amazed at the world for amazing you in such a subtle yet magnificent way.

It's the little things, all those wonderful, precious, honest, instinctive, sincere little things, that somehow seem to change... everything.