Dialogues with Love

Every afternoon around three, Sarah and Ben take their cassette player downstairs to the building lobby to listen Frank Sinatra hits. Ben carries his cane and Sarah drags her feet in a walker. Once at the lobby, Ben helps Sarah sit down and makes sure she is comfortable. Then, he operates the cassette player, joins her in the couch, and they both grab hands. For about two hours, they listen to the music without saying a word while they fixed their looks on an invisible spot somewhere in the room in a trip that seems to be back in time. When the music brings some shared memory, they look at each other and smile.

It is impossible not to get caught in this picture without admiring the situation and wondering about love. How many times do we define love from the bad experiences lived instead of finding a constructive look from what it is possible? Is it because we constantly focus on the results instead putting the look in the process?

We live in a culture that is not trained to deal with processes, in where happiness is a mere product, a glamorous outcome, or an immediate and easy access to empty pleasure; a culture that presents utilitarian choices and incentives dysfunctional search. I remember my grandparents would have the same oak dining table for 20 years, and then the same table would be passed to the children and grandchildren as a gesture of value and continuation of affection. Now, we buy tables every time we move without a blink of an eye. Are we transferring the same skills to our relationships making us devalue effort, risk, pauses, and emotional literacy by putting the focus on simulations of love?

Ben and Sarah do not have the most exciting stories to tell. Their love simply manifests through their purposeful looks, the slow and coordinated walk, the secured strength in the passion of their holding hands, the shared silence they both understand, the complicity as they listen to music, the dearness and calmness of their smiles... the trust that if one falls, the other will be there as support.

Sarah and Ben can be themselves with each other, trustfully sharing their emotions in a world that moves around. It took them many years to construct this profound dialogue of affection, respect, understanding, and emphatic knowledge and care of the needs, desires, meaning, and feelings of each other.

How is our dialogue with love? What is the story we tell about love?

"Harmony is pure love, for love is a concerto." Lope de Vega-

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