This evening I saw a group of kids walking home from school. They had stopped by a fence that had flowers and were plucking them. Some were making bouquets, some were putting flowers in their hair, and others were plucking off petals and scattering them.
This took me back to my own childhood when we would pluck petals of flowers to determine whether a boy loved or didn’t love us.
He loves me. Pluck a petal.
He loves me not. Pluck.
He loves me. Pluck.
He loves me not. Pluck.
The suspense was exciting. We were not joking around just pulling apart a flower, but we were discovering the truth. And if the last petal landed on “he loves me not,” we would simply find another flower and begin again as if the flower had made a small mistake.
Back then it was harmless. The stakes were imaginary and as a matter of fact the boys in question probably didn’t even know our names.
But I think sometimes we never really stopped playing that game. We just replaced the petals.
They called.
They didn’t call.
He/She said good morning.
He/She left my message on blue tick.
They remembered my birthday.
They forgot the thing that mattered most to me.
They say they misses me.
They disappear for three days.
He/She makes plans.
He/She cancels.
They apologise.
They repeat.
And there I am again, plucking invisible petals off a relationship, trying to land on the right ending.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
The thing about the flower was that the outcome depended on how many petals it had. It was random. Pure chance.
And yet as adults, we try to calculate love from the same way. We treat inconsistency like a crazy puzzle instead of seeing it as a pattern. We convince ourselves that if we just count the calls, the dates, the silences, the promises carefully enough, we will finally reach a stable answer.
But love is not supposed to feel like probability, is it?
If you are constantly oscillating between certainty and doubt, between warmth and withdrawal, between “of course he loves me” and “I am not so sure,” then you are not in a love story. You are in a guessing game. And guessing games are exhausting.
The most dangerous part is just like with the flower, when we don’t like the answer, we restart and then try to argue it out to get the answer we want.
“He/She loves me not.”
No, wait. That was a bad week.
“He/She loves me not.”
No, they just stressed.
“He/She loves me not.”
No, I’m overthinking.
So we find another flower and another explanation and another reset because accepting the result feels a lot tougher than plucking again. I don't think love should require counting. It should not need decoding, analysing, or tallying. You should not need to gather evidence like a detective building a case.
From where my feet are, if I still have to count petals to feel secure, then I already have my answer. Love should not swing between extremes nor should it leave me guessing. From where my feet are, if it feels like a game of chance, then it probably is exactly that, and I am too grown to keep plucking petals.
Love, a topic that triggers not the most remarkable or bearable memories. People have stories about it that could invoke a World War. It really portrays it as a thing nor to mess with for some an option not to meander into but one must love if they dont find love love finds them. I concure with you. Its a two drive not a one drive. The parties involved indeed must be on the same page. Here suspense must be minimal. Otherwise, it would be equivalent of owning land whose Kyapaa you dont have
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing. He loves me, he loves me not...while meeting 'the love of your life is a game of chance' keeping/staying in love is definitely not about chance but has to be a deliberate effort to nurture that love and is not about chance...I love this.
ReplyDeleteSo, there's this ratio called the golden ratio other Fibonacci sequence. It has a lot to do with where you start the 'plucking'.
ReplyDeleteWith it comes Fibonacci retracement, ordinarily the Fibonacci retracement is a tool used to identify potential support and resistance levels where an asset's price might pause or reverse.
It is based on the idea that markets often retrace a predictable portion of a major move before continuing in the original direction.
Where there market, replace love ❤️
Excuse the typos. I didn't read "Publish" no Edits.
Delete"...accepting the result feels a lot tougher than plucking again..." I love this so much because of how true it is...definitely sharing with more ladies
DeleteMy theory is that love should be about finding that flower, admiring its petals and acknowledging that the flower is beautiful as a whole and not as individual petals. Our mission then becomes to look after that flower for as long as we have it. Water it, turn it to the sun, weed it and know that the petals will fall off one day and that its okay. When we pluck petals, we leave the flower less than we found it. Its no longer a flower - just another piece of a yes/no game. That's my theory anyway, because as I child, I didn't play that game.ðŸ¤
ReplyDeleteA guessing game indeed!!
ReplyDeleteThat's where I stopped understanding!