“Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.” ~ Albert Einstein

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“I love you.” I was carried away when I uttered the words, but sobered when they met a cold stare.

Once again, I was making a loving fool of myself.

But love happens—and when it does it won’t be tamed. It ignores convenience and context. Love doesn’t care if it is requited, only that it flows downhill from your heart.

It did. My warm body, her cold stare—me an American with a little money to spend, her a working girl in Holland. It’s legal there to pay to make love, but that doesn’t mean that love returned. It only takes one to love.

This isn’t the first time, or the last, love is offered unilaterally. But love ignores everything—like water, it doesn’t care where it flows.

Love never knows any better. It will attempt to turn a one night stand into happily ever after. I’ve seen myself do that! Hearts break and open in the process. Love always leaves a wake of open hearts.

It’s so embarrassing, humbling and human to be a fool for love, following love around like a wide eyed groupie—but I do. I figure that if you are going to be a fool for something, it might as well be love.

I’ll be your fool, your love fool.

I’ll love you even when it doesn’t make sense, even when you are sure you aren’t lovable.

Being a love fool, I’m leading with my heart, and that makes for a dance worth dancing. I’d rather love you, than not. I love you because I can, and I can’t not, asking nothing in return. If love is optional, it isn’t love. Love comes with each human being as standard equipment. Use it or not—notice it or not—it’s a vital part of who we are.

The ability to love is purely human. The ability to express it daring and unique each moment.

Loving changes everything. It doesn’t protect and defend you. Instead it makes you totally vulnerable and invincible at the same time. It makes you immortal too, because it flows with all loves past and future, a timeless love current.

Love amplifies the early morning rain into Beethoven’s tenth symphony. It opens senses to sensations others miss—it puts the antenna up, picking up sights, sounds smells and tastes, so the spring peeper frog sounds are accompanied by full bodied tears of joy.

It’s a fuller life, being a fool for love—there is nothing careful about it, or rational either. It makes you soft in the best of ways. It makes you a gentle, seductive invitation to an ever more loving world, in a loving universe.

Dare to love today—April Fool’s Day and every other day. Be a fool for love on Arbor Day, birthdays, Tuesdays—and any day on which the sun rises or sets.

Love makes life intrinsically worth it. You can’t earn love, but you can pass it around.

“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” ~ Bertrand Russell

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Author: Jerry Stocking

Editor: Yoli Ramazzina

Photo: Pixabay