There is an expression in Lithuanian “to lose one’s head” which is used to say someone is really in love. I remembered it because last week week was Valentine’s Day and Lithuania’s Independence Day. And this got me thinking – is true love even compatible with independence? Can one really love and yet remain separate?
In the meantime, our 1.5 year old daughter just the same week fell in love with a Kitty doll knitted by her grandma. Funnily enough, the doll actually wears a Lithuanian-flag-coloured dress. But I digress – back to love! So this doll – which my daughter named “Nene” – has started joining us for all our routines – potty, eating, breastfeeding, bedtime. And in the process of so much intense love Nene has lost a whisker and her nose.
The answer to my questions about true love came while watching those two fall asleep in the strongest embrace. I’m now convinced that true love goes way beyond dependence or even interdependence, all the way to inter-mingleness or inter-meshedness of sorts! So much so that in the process of it we lose our heads – some even noses! – but more importantly our sense of separateness. Or as Pablo Neruda beautifully puts it:
Tags: loving what is paper love Traveler's Notebook writing“where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”
