Kryponite Love

“What’s this that’s happening between us?”

Have you ever noticed this? You arrive at a sweet moment between you and another person – maybe a lover, maybe just a friend at a coffee shop – one of those moments where there’s the right combination of 1) nobody’s in a hurry to go anywhere else, 2) there’s a feeling of quiet calmness, and 3) someone is simply looking at the other and feeling content in themselves. Let’s add 4) a feeling of LOVE is in the air, though not necessarily between one and the other. Maybe one of the parties is simply in love with the summer breeze, or the homemade cookie. Or maybe they’re just happy it’s Friday. In any event, there’s a feeling as if, suddenly, LOVE had been brought out of someone’s shopping bag and quietly placed on the table between you, between the teacups and marmalade. Nobody mentions it. There it is, just sitting on the table. Suddenly, it’s as if an abandoned suitcase was found at the airport, police all around and announcements over the intercom:

“What is this?”

 “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”

“I’ve suddenly remembered an appointment.”

“What are we doing here?”

I myself would begin babbling incoherently, creating a Wall of Words, as if to smother the darn thing with a makeshift cabin of tiny lincoln logs.

Yes, it’s just a quiet moment, but suddenly it’s filled with drama. OMG, did someone just empty a container of radioactive plutonium onto the table? Or Kryptonite? Cut to a scene with the public panic and screaming; someone get a demolition box over that thing, for God’s sake!

Yes, we all know the danger of love. It will clean you out, weaken your knees, take your breath away. It will lay waste to your well-made plans. If you open yourself up to it, you had better know where the Next Dose is coming from. Otherwise, you won’t be able to control how much of this powerful feeling you’re going to get, or when the nurse will come around again.

Which is probably the fear most of us had in our childhoods, a past moment in which we weighed the risks, asked the question, “How will I get this feeling again without YOU (Mom, Dad, Grandma)?,” and decided that it was too scary to expose ourselves without assurances.

But what if, this time, without any assurances at all, we simply let it sit, right there, on the table? We don’t call the bomb squad. We don’t dive under the table. We don’t tear off screaming through the mall.

Instead, we take a deep breath, relax, sit quietly… and enjoy the moment.

Ahhhhh, maybe kryptonite is just the thing we’ve been waiting for all these years.