Bloom

We're hard wired for the bloom. We expect that things should be intensely seen, felt, tasted and explosive. Immediate. No where else in life it seems do we make these assumptions than in the search for love. Walking into a new job, we dare not assume we'll have the corner office in a day or in a week.  Likewise, a new acquaintance will only become a great friend after weathering a storm or two. What is it about the promise of great, intoxicating love do we cast aside all measure of reality and shake our fist at the heavens while we wait for everything to come together. just. as. it. should. be.

A bloom is obvious, blaring. Its raw power and intensity justifies our inclination to believe that because something feels like goodness that it is actually good. Reality reports back that the bloom has little to do with outcomes or whether we will be enriched or destroyed in the process. But we demand that it be so. 

So we search.

Our attraction to the bloom is centered around the idea of expectations. Expectations are a scary, insidious thing especially when they are not tempered with reality. They hold us back from experiencing life differently simply because we cannot see past our own version of what should be. So we revert back to what we know and what feels the most like smoldering fire. However, this insistence could strip us of the very thing that we are fighting tooth and nail for to begin with: to know and be known. 

It takes great faith to believe what we have been told by those far wiser than ourselves. Wisdom that says that love, great love, the kind we all search for can be grown and cultivated by seed through sweat, selflessness, understanding and patience towards other and self. In a word, work. As unsexy as that was to write, it is far less enchanting to envision for one's own life. I still prefer to be transfixed.

My hope is, of course, that I'm not asking too much.  My hope is that it is entirely possible that I could have goodness with fire, real love and bloom.  The kind that will not render my soul ember and ash.