During Halloween week I spent the week at my girlfriend Ife’s house and I had the scariest experience of my life. Looking back on it, it was slightly hilarious. If you want to read about what happened then click here.
This week I learned a valuable lesson from Ife that life is simply hard, so there’s no point in striving for an easy way out. Fight, and keep fighting. Marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Obesity is hard. Being fit is hard. Being in debt is hard. Being financially disciplined is hard. Communication is hard. Not communicating is hard. Life will never be easy. It will always be hard. But we at least have the freedom to pick our battle.
“Love is violence, sex is violence, every interaction is violent it’s just a matter of scale. How much of something do we want to feel? Does it feel good when your lover takes your hand when you didn’t expect it, does it feel better when he grabs your nipples, twists them..and on and on?”—Serial Killer, Paul Bateson
That quote started a thought-provoking conversation with Ife about extreme domination and submissive sex. Read it here.
As you see, my week was filled with the beautiful life and mind of Ife. It was thrilling and stimulating. I loved it. So, I’ll close this email with a candid quote from Ife that she said while cooking. The thought was about Love being within all of us. She said:
There isn’t any specific time during us knowing each other where you could pinpoint, “Boom! Okay, I love her now.” It’s more of a slow-paced realization. That’s weird because with every other emotion, like happiness or anger, it’s easy to pinpoint the exact source. “You did this, so I’m mad. You said this, so I’m sad.” Love for me might have always been in you, and is in there for everyone, but it just takes the right amount of time and interaction to discover the love that has always been there. We try to make sense of love by looking back on life saying, “I spent years getting to know her. We do anything and everything together. She’s a very nice person that empathizes with everyone.” But what if the truth is that behind all the reasons you just came up with to validate the feeling...you’ve just simply always loved me. Which is crazy because if you told everyone you loved me from the first-day people would think you’re crazy, but if you got a puppy and told everyone you loved the puppy on the first day they’d all get it. But that’s a side note. Maybe love is just always there. A gem within all of us that simply needs to be discovered...
I agree with her because I believe that great love comes from great understanding. To me, the process of understanding is the shovel digging into the other person. Eventually, with enough digging—time, attention, hard work, commitment—you’re going to find the gem of love.
