For the past three mornings I’ve sat at the kitchen table at my dad’s house where I’ve dipped toast in sunny side up eggs and drank my coffee and ate my bacon. On the wall opposite of where I sit, next to the light switch is a little placard that reads in cursive: Live, Laugh, Love. Every one has seen these – you know exactly the type of placard I’m talking about. It’s the type of thing that gets hung in a kitchen or hallway or bathroom. For three mornings, I’ve been thinking about this placard. I see the same phrase used as a lot as screen names on dating sites (along with “starting over” or “be honest” or “Love2Smile” or “LovingLife”). For three mornings I’ve looked and thought about the type of world we live in – one in which these reminders are necessary. For three mornings, I’ve felt a little sad about all of this – the simplicity of the advice, and the fact that, despite our best efforts, we find so many ways to fuck it all up… so many ways to sabotage ourselves. This is what David Foster Wallace talked about in This Is Water – “the fact is that, in the day-to-day trenches of adult existence, banal platitudes can have life-or-death importance.” Live, Laugh, Love.
For a few years, I’ve been trying to boil my essence down to something along the lines of that philosophy. In 2017, hiking though Tennessee I thought about the relationship I was mourning, listening to a lot of music about holding on to what’s important, and thinking about the things that make me happy – music, nature, animals, people, family, friends, and a deep and loving connection with another human being. That summer I decided I would be at the beach or in the mountains every weekend. I decided I would see as much live music as I could. I adopted a mantra of do more of what makes me smile, and less of what I don’t like. It can be seen as childish or irresponsible, but I didn’t care. I felt like I was discovering a zest for life. I know I dated a few people, though for the life of me can’t remember who… they were not the ones bringing joy in to my life.
Also on that trip I paid a lot of attention to the lyrics of the songs I had on heavy rotation – mostly a band named Wild Child. I was on the highway either in Kentucky or between Nashville and Memphis when I realized that they all had to do with the push and pull of a relationship. I remembered listening to similar songs when another woman and I were together – we had a lot of push and pull – she left me several times. As I listened, I thought about my divorce. I used to tell the women I dated that it was amicable and easy (it was). I wore that as a tiny badge of honor – I was one of the few people out there dating who didn’t hate his ex… but I also realized that it shouldn’t have been easy. Leaving someone you had spent 17 years with should never be easy. I was sad that we had no fight in us, that neither of us seemed to care. It was on that drive that I began to think, and truly believe, that love is worth fighting for. I’m pretty sure my ex would agree, we didn’t love each other when we got divorced (or at least, we weren’t in love with each other). There was nothing there to fight for. The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that not only was it worth fighting for, but it might be one of the only things worth fighting for in life. If not for love, then what?
The beauty of simple platitudes and realizing something is worth fighting for creates a new world of possibilities. When you can pull back and say I really want this, you get clarity on the goal. The “in the moment” shit, kinda fades away. You can suddenly forgive all types of harms, but more importantly, you can stop and say we don’t even have to fight for it- it’s right here in front of us, it’s already within us. When you’re fighting for it, and I mean really fighting for it, you have the chance to just stop and say – we’re fighting for the same thing…. This thing is so important to us, the stakes are so high – if they weren’t we, we’d both just walk away. There’s a song lyric from “Stubborn Love” by The Lumineers “The opposite of love is indifference” – it’s adapted from Elie Wiesel “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” You can only be angry when you’re invested…. it’s when you no longer care that you’re truly no longer in love. I suspect that all one has to do is let a little bit of that caring back in to their heart and give it space to grow, give it thought and feeling, give it words and images. I’ve spent the last few months putting words to my feelings and memories, for me it’s not hard to hold on to the fight inside me – I believed it more deeply than anything I’ve believed so far.
None of this is all that difficult. It’s as simple as Live, Laugh, Love.