An Essay inspiered by a poem by Erich Fried

„Love as water“ by Ulrike Gerbig

It’s ridiculous
Says pride
It is careless
Says caution
It is impossible
Says experience
It is what it is
Says love
Erich Fried

There is no logical or rational approach to love. No matter how much we try to “understand” our motives or that of our partners, we will never reach an answer that will close the gap between our emotion and our ratio.
Living in a technical age, in which the emphasize lies on action and measurable success, and not on feeling, this insoluble contradiction inert to love drives us crazy sometimes. It even makes some of us ill.

Yet it should remind us, that love is one of the life’s primeval forces, so ancient and deeply rooted, that it defies all attempts to be “modernized”.

Still, we try – time and again – to measure our partners and our feelings by standards that might be useful when judging a business deal.
We talk about “feasibility” and “profitableness”, about “equal shares” and “deals” we have with each other.

The pain of a separation we try to rationalize by saying it “did not work” (as if the love affair had been a machine), it did not “suit us” (as if the partner was a piece of clothing ready to be discarded with every new fashion), we “reached the limit” (as if loving someone was a bank account or a credit agreement).

We wonder why none of that helps to ease our pain, or relief our anger and disappointment or prevent us from falling into the same traps time and again. Often we think that if we replace the partner and make a new deal, things will eventually work to our liking. If it does not, it is not the concept that is wrong, but circumstances or our counterpart.

But maybe the images are wrong, the way we think and speak about love. The words we use, the images we create, can be very revealing about our inner concept of things – both abstract and concrete.

What if we thought of love in terms of water, rising and ebbing, changing according to its inert rhythm?
What if we knew that it can be a small brook, soothing us with its quiet murmuring, creating a steady background noise to our every day life?
A source inevitable for our survival, providing us with one of the things we really can’t live without?
A soft rain that falls on our faces like a gentle touch from somewhere far beyond us, bringing us new hope and making our seedlings grow?
A river, broad and wide, running its cause as nature made it and unstoppable, except for human interference?
An ocean, rough at times, and quiet at others. Tossing us about and nearly drowning us and putting us in awe and then again being incredibly calm and deeper and wider then we ever can grasp?


Could we then learn to give up any attempt to control love and accept that it runs its natural cause?
Could we understand that wells fall dry and blame is no use and we have to move on?
That it is no use to scream at a raging ocean or wanting to control its ferocity?
Could we learn to accept that this element has its own rules and learn to respect them?
Could we finally see that “caution” in dealing with the element is wise, but will not change its nature?
That “experience” is useful, but will not help us change its laws?
That “pride” is useless in facing that force and that only humility will teach us that it is something bigger than us, utterly beyond our control?
Could we learn that we have to know how to swim before we have close contact with deep water?
That we need external help when we are close to drowning?
That sometimes there is no other way but to give up and give in to this huge force which is so much bigger than ourselves and so much more important?

Could we then finally accept that each drop of love we receive increases our own inner ocean, fills the lakes of our souls and feeds our own rivers, so that we can let love flow out of ourselves and into other systems? That there will always be water somewhere, but in order to survive, we have to go out and find it and that we cannot demand in what form it comes to us?

Just like the water cycle is not a closed one, love evaporates and rises to the skies and falls down somewhere else, increasing some other lake or river or brook or ocean. Sometimes it runs underground – reappearing in places least expected.
Following that thought, no love would ever be lost, but just transformed, transferred to some other place, to another stage. In a way it always returns to where it came from, transformed and after a long journey, but nevertheless it returns. But it is true , too: no river ever runs backward and if a well runs dry we have to move on.

Accepting that thought could we finally learn to see that love in itself cannot be measured or limited by reason, or be explained on a rational basis?
That it just “is” and always “will be” – somewhere in some form if not where it set off in the beginning?