“No one is smart enough to figure out
anything worthwhile from scratch.”
- Pinker, S. The
Better Angels of our Nature
Susie Shamkunas (Sham-Koo-nis)…now there is a name, and
there was a girl. Little doubt, I was
smitten!
Memory is that illusive narrator of history with a kind of
plasticity. You know, elastic things
return to their original shape (rubber bands for example), plastic changes DO
NOT return to their original shape (pie crust from a ball of dough). Once changed, they appear to have always been
that way. Yeah, memory may or may not
have anything to do with the truth.
Truth – what the heck is the truth?
But then there was Susie Shamkunas, at the age of six, the
love of my life. In my less mature years
(prior to six), I thought girls were…hmmm…in the nicely honed vocabulary of my
youth - YUCKIE! In fact, I even resented them in the free
floating anxiety best expressed by having been isolated to my own bedroom,
while my sisters got to share. I didn’t
understand and thought it to be completely unfair!
Girls, as far as I could tell, they were a real nuisance.
The page turned…
But then something changed, something brand new, something I
had even less understanding about – I ‘saw’ Susie. It wasn’t that I had not seen her before,
after all, we were in Sunday school together.
I don’t even know when this actually happened, but one day I
looked at her and all kinds of things began to happen: unsettled tummy, short breath,
heart beat faster, no words to speak, damp hands and furtive glances to see if
there were some place to hide!
Yep, I think I was in love!
She had blond curly hair, wore frilly dresses, had brown eyes, and I
don’t know…it was like I had been lightening struck.
One day, when my mother was looking after her at our house –
right at the beginning of the Mickey Mouse Club on TV – I kissed her! Okay, I had been emboldened by Annette
Funicello, whose face had just popped up on the screen announcing herself:
“Annette!”
I had practiced kissing Annette on a couple of occasions when
she announced herself, so I did have experience.
I mumbled something like, “I love you and now you are my
girlfriend.”
She smiled and giggled like we had just shared a secret, and
I can’t remember one other thing about the girl from that day forward! The event with Susie is memorable to me,
simply because…well, simply because of the feelings and the terror of the first
kiss!!
I loved my mother and dad, but would characterize that as a
feeling of consistency and safety. I know
I learned to love my sisters, I suppose because they were daily constants in
the routine of my life, but I can say this with certain authority – I NEVER
felt anything with my family like I felt with that cutie pie who first stole my
heart – Susie Shamkunas!
Yeah, but what does
it mean?
Love! That set of
feelings that have yet to be defined despite the untold volumes of poetry,
stories, music and film on the subject – all of which reflect the most common
and primal sensations every single one of us has had. Importantly, when read, heard or seen, some ageless
resonance is touched within us and we know of a surety we have at least basked
in the echoed shadow of the ‘vérité obscure’ (obscure truth).
So what is this thing called love. One is tempted to express, “I don’t exactly
know what it is, but I know it when I see [feel] it!”
Okay, to be fair, there are dictionary definitions categorizing
the attraction we, as humans have for one another: affection, friendship, romance, eros and unconditional love. I suppose I can identify with these words in
terms of the way we interact with one another, and I further suppose, for this
discussion, I’m talking about eros…I guess.
Giving it a whirl…
I have given this a fair amount of thought in trying to
understand the context of my life experience.
I mean, when does the ‘I like you’ slip over the cliff to ‘I love
you’?
“Cliff” is a good metaphor, best reflected in the expression
“…falling in love…” Yeah, that’s the feeling isn’t it – falling! Like the first drop on one of those huge
rollercoasters.
If you are a kindred spirit that likes coasters, close your
eyes and imagine the excitement of heading up the first hill, the fearful
anticipation of the approaching uncontrolled feelings, the exhilaration as the
car passes the crest and the total cognitive ‘short circuitry’ of the
drop!
No thought…no deliberation…no sense of anything but the
astonishing stomach turning of the drop!
Yeah, that’s what I think love is…or at least how it seems to start.
The thing is, everything we know comes into our minds single
file, and every way we communicate with others, comes out of us single file…but
man, when all that stuff is ‘in the mixer,’ Katy bar the door! When the accumulated paraphernalia floating
around in our brains is sparked by feelings of love – all bets are off! Call the it Kismet, pheromones,
serendipity, fate, the weather, the stars…call it whatever you want, but when
it is lit ‘things’ happen!
Empires built, novels written, songs sung, flights to the
moon and the stars, an explosion of creativity – a ‘no holds barred’ sensation
overcomes us and we feel there is NOTHING we cannot do!
The ‘language of love,’ usually in the context of the
delicate – sometimes not so delicate – dance that leads to a carnally
conclusive act, is often discussed as though sexual gratification were the
driving force toward the end game whispered by our genetic code for the
survival of the species. Yeah, maybe…
All I know is that when it gets going – Mazel Tov!! (Congratulations and Good luck!!)
As the management of those initial feelings, Plato calls the
‘charioteer’ of our nature, emerge…the wilder horse is reined in by the driver
(human soul), and once happening, our widely swinging feelings calm (the more
noble horse taking control) and our lives proceed forward.
There is more…
The thing is, we are not machines. The passion of love that we feel in the
beginning doesn’t (or shouldn’t) go away and can emerge at any time in our
lives. In maturity, it may become more
guarded and ‘other focused’ through the accomplishment of
tasks/goals/challenges life brings us, but the appetite of the wild horse lying
just under the surface continues to inform the things we do and decisions we make.
This may be a revelation to those of you who are young, but
while planetary ‘time in service’ may diminish many things, it does NOT lessen
feelings of passion.
Take away…
So what is my take away from this? I have come to believe the passion of love is
like beautiful music the lyrics for which we have not yet, as a species, come
to truly understand…or at least in a succinct, clear, articulated way.
I think love is a primal communication that God, the
universal creative intelligence, has placed in us as a homing mechanism to draw
us toward one another yes, but more importantly, closer toward Him.
Love has no time…no distance…no culture…no circumstance…no
geography defining its existence. It may
begin with proximity, but from the ‘lighting of the fuse,’ it has a life of its
own.
You don’t believe this?
Take a moment to think about someone you love(-ed) with whom you no
longer have contact, or who may have passed on from this life…take a moment and
think of them…what do you feel?
Yeah, I thought so.
I can tell you this…when Susie Shamkunas came to mind, it
wasn’t some distant thought of ‘Paradise Lost,’ it was all the richness,
sincerity and feelings a little boy of six could muster…
- ted
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