June 1, 2026: Strobe-Light Love

I changed my headlights the other day. I put in strobe lights instead. Now when I drive at night, it looks like everyone else is standing still. Stephen Wright

Looking for love is tricky business, like whipping a carousel horse. George Cukar

Heaven and love can well use hell, but hell can only misuse heaven and love. Hoonōs

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard

Reconsidering the past is surely one powerful way to change perspective. Applying that reconsideration to the future is surely one powerful way to change behavior.

Still, and no disrespect to Søren Kierkegaard, considering or reconsidering either the past or the future can only be done in the present. Perhaps that is why the term “present” can mean a gift or time. Or even the gift of time or the time for gifts. Such considerations are one of the cornerstones of democracy.  And democracy is not just a political term.

This is a look at the democracy of love and intimacy. It is a rather dark look at what is, but a bright look at what can be accomplished if we want to. That shift is not above our skill level. One can do it alone. But honestly and accurately sharing perspective, even when it changes, is the gift of our sixth-sense (yes, there are many modes of signal detection).

Strobe-light love: relationships experienced in flashes intense enough to feel eternal, separated by darkness long enough to mistake stillness for safety.

Not exactly a Valentine’s Day card. But it could be one in the humorous section.

I was taught men are love’s wayfarers; women are love’s lighthouse, also stated as men pursue love while women guarded it. It took me decades to realize everyone can be both a wayfarer and a lighthouse—everyone is pursuing and guarding. However, wayfarer and lighthouse, pursuing and guarding can all be protections from actually finding, having, and retaining what we seek.

Protecting can often be important. Who among us can navigate without looking out?  However, protecting ourselves from love leads to emotional distance and that effort, that distance, requires a full-time job—and that particular job does not come with options to advance, retirement accounts, or medical care, even if it comes with the illusion of vacation benefits. In any case, it is a mistake to confuse emotional distance as protection.  Protection has its own tyranny.

Still, protection is ubiquitous and that is why most can only tolerate about five days of happiness. Apparently, that is all the happiness many of us can stand at one time.

It sounds weird, but sometimes not having a choice means more freedom than having a choice. Nonetheless, I’ve learned that freedom can become a heavier yoke. Love merely gets blamed for the weight.

Most often, those five days punctuate the normal disconnect instead of the disconnect punctuating happiness. We can learn to prepare for the long winters of love and intimacy when we live deep in the longitude and latitude of protection. The result can be the rationing of intimacy, which tends to favor chaos more than connection. The only thing left is hope in that dark season.

I am now an “older” man and it does not seem likely I’ll stumble across a minimally protected female, though stumble seems like the correct wording at my age (okay, I am still ambulatory). But death is also an intimate relationship and unlike love, one cannot avoid death. Nonetheless, the question remains—can I face that “spring” of intimacy whether death or love, instead of falling into dark brooding? I’ve come to think and feel it is only a few among us that find the spring of love (sappy squared!). Death on the other hand, might find more folks in the acceptance stage.

As movement seems a staple of life and life seems a staple of the universe, perhaps it is change we also need to embrace. Death is a horizon and a horizon is only as far as one can see. What wonders await may not be seen by those hacked by the brooding, protective parasite that makes intimacy and love seem so discontinuous, when it is so constant, so ubiquitous, despite so many changes.

Interesting how breath is required in any case of love and intimacy. One may lose their breath when meeting beauty, but that same beauty will restart the process.

There is such a diversity of lifeforms—obvious to all of us. And such continuity despite its differences. One way of being may seem like stability, but change remains. So, life also moves. Part of that movement is breath. Life breathes in many ways and in many forms, even if it is not the breath we presently know.