About a month ago I said that love does not need to be mirrored for it to be worth giving. That it isn’t something you can measure as a transaction. And that I don’t know how to justify myself receiving any in return. That was obviously a bad day, and I have those, of course. Of course I do. But maybe it’s a good idea to talk about mirrors then.
We can do better than measure love as something you give and receive in return – it turns love into interchangeable components, one currency of bills you break into coins as you spend it. But I believe almost nothing in the world works like that, and I got onto this deluded, labyrinthine trail only because I don’t always know in what currencies others spend their love, and it worried me that the coins looked nothing like mine.
But that’s the point, then. What I put in isn’t what comes out. That’s the entire point. If you gave me back my money it would be a terrible trade. You give me something else in return, and that will be in something foreign at first, and perhaps something curious for a while, and then familiar, and that will be understood as their way of expressing love. This isn’t radical.
But what is radical for me, and is beating me down like a heavy storm, is slowly learning to see myself in others. If I’m spending my love wisely at all, it will come back to me. It will reflect in the faces of my friends. I will tell them I love them because I see that I am part of them. The crashing humility of seeing someone love you back in a way you have shown them love before. Not that it’s about me, of course. Not really. It’s about how loveable and wonderful my friends are. But my friends all own a handful of cash in a currency I love to spend.