Love

 Mac had worked out he had been born old at a fairly young age because he had always had an old man's point of view. Now he was retired and had accumulated enough health problems to reasonably assume he was close to the end of the journey.

He spends much of his time pondering the meaning of it all. Had he learned what he'd been sent here to learn?

With age comes perspective was one of the first gems he had picked up on. Before he was thirty Mac had observed that what was important to you at twenty would seem laughable at forty and downright comical at sixty.

A recent incident had shaken him and his beliefs badly. He hadn't thought it was possible and yet here he was, tripping over his own feet trying to decide what to do and why.

The idea that you were helpless to choose your own path made Mac's mind recoil. If he had thought for one minute that he had zero choice he'd drive into the nearest bridge abutment as fast as his car could go to consciously end it all. A life of no choice was no life at all.

Mac's philosophy was you made your choices then you lived with them. Correcting what you could as you went along and working with (or around) whatever defied fixing.

Mac had often wondered if this myopic, forward at any cost, perspective had extracted a toll on his overall happiness because Murphy, of the if it could go wrong, it would and usually at the worst possible moment had dogged his entire life but particularly in the love department.

Mac wore dentures from an early age (smoking had cost him his teeth) but Mac figured love had kicked his teeth down his throat so many times he was likely paying for past missteps even to this day.

Like most teens, Mac's early forays into the battlefield we call love had shattered his naive heart. What doesn't lill you makes you stronger. Mac adjusted his sights and plowed forward in the typical paradigm of if at first, you don't succeed, try, try again.

Also in play was the ancient axiom of you marry the first one that does or the first one that doesn't.

The first one was a distant speck in the rearview mirror, leaving only the other alternative remaining.

.

Make all of the assumptions you want, by the third decade of dating, the process has been reduced to one of 'work ability'. Can you work with the other person? Love? Hell, even like was off the table at this point.

As things culminated towards the altar, the velvet gloves were almost in tatters. Only the incessant ticking of the clock and the overwhelming despair at the thought of starting over again from scratch kept the process moving forward.

How unfortunate for Mac and others in his position that he neglected to note that psychosis had entered the equation and that she was already in the early stages of planning her exit strategy?

Mac had managed to thwart her initial early exit [at a stiff price] and stay in the house he agreed to pay for until his youngest child graduated college.

“I'm Free!” Mac thought to himself when his youngest crossed the threshold of adulthood. What Mac failed to appreciate was just 'How free' he truly was.

Mac's race was run. He was too old to sire more children or buy houses for women building estates for their children from previous marriages.

After a swift no-fault divorce Mac abandoned his expensive, native Boston for Southwest Texas. Much had changed in thirty years. Gone were the bars where people would meet and get to know each other. Now dating was done online with teenage boys messing with both sides of the newly single equation. Posing as either sex and trying to get their victim to come across with money or compromising photos.

New dating made everybody paranoid but the watering holes of the world still persisted.

Old habits are hard to break and with no progress on the digital front, the bar scene beckoned. Mac walked into the equivalent of a Hooters one night and was instantly smitten by your standard-issue blue-eyed blonde bombshell. Mac had dated plenty of pretty girls (including his ex) and one of the rules never changed, the employees had to be nice to you so they were off-limits.

Mac took notice of the girl but he didn't encourage her. He was at least twice her age and she probably had a dozen boys chasing her tail. Still, there was something different about her. She had an awareness about her that was almost supernatural. There was a lot more to her than met the eye.

Mac ultimately learned he had forty years on her but he also found out that she was, personality-wise, custom-made for him but still he managed to keep his distance. What pushed him over the edge was the night she picked his hand off the bar and held it in hers. His soul touched hers and he was gone. Love had swallowed him whole instantly. He didn't know her last name or anything specific about her despite being a regular for six months.

Naturally, Mac panicked and faced the mother of all existential crises. Unrequited love was serious karmic business. Refuse true love twice and pay for eternity!

When it comes to true love, the kind that transcends lust; all rational thought deserts you. The victim naturally assumes she felt what he did and he is puzzled when his reaction frightens her.

It took Mac a while to sort out his own feelings and make sense of what had happened.

99.9% of the time we are in love alone. He learned this tough lesson long ago but because it was so long ago he had forgotten this basic fact.

It is why love almost never works.

Why did he so deeply fear abandoning this all too rare second chance, if that is what it was? The victim finds themselves in an untenable position. If the object of their desire doesn't feel the same way there is nothing you can say to convince them. No words will move them, no sacrifice will be understood for what it truly represents.

There is but one thing to do when you discover the one you love doesn't love you and that is to walk away. Your heart will be forever scarred but you can't fight fate. [You'll come across as a lunatic if you try to explain you are star-crossed, best just not to go there.]

One inescapable truth is we are all here to Learn. It is the true purpose of life. Now it became Mac's job to figure out what Fate was trying to teach him with this “Ah-ha, got your nose” moment. What was karma trying to teach him by showing him his gullibility at this late stage of the game?

He already knew that much of what life threw at you had to be taken in stride or it would crush you and, try as you may, you can't be prepared for everything.

Did true love exist? Rhetorical question, of course it existed. The better question was whether or not true love was always toxic? True Love exists and it is irresistible! We all fall in love yet we disregard the danger.

If love strikes, you are powerless to resist; yet your only real 'choice' is to walk away because it is inevitable you are in love alone.

By this argument, free will wins but your powerlessness against true love makes the case for inevitability. Ah, conundrums. In the end, it is what it is.

A parable by G.C.Anderson Jr