I do not think I am a pessimist. I consider myself more of a sworn optimist with a realist inside. That realist comes to the fore when I look around and see the way we act, the way we hate, raise our children, treat nature and I think… We are fucked. And then, out of nowhere, an optimist from the inside snarles out and makes me say this aloud to myself – Love will save us all.

Love is when you do not lose faith in the goodness of a stranger, even though you have been hurt by those who know you well, when you do not stop doing your best even when you suspect you have lost everything, when, in the darkest moments, you give off your own light to illuminate the way even to the blind. Love is when, despite having a house, you only succeed in finding a home for your nomadic soul in other people’s hearts. Love is when you do not ask who, how and why, but just give yourself without fear you will be taken advantage of because love is a renewable source of energy. If there is no more wind, the sea or sunlight, only then shall I start worrying that love may be gone as well.

For the time being, I am still convinced it exists. Everywhere. It lies in understanding, making sacrifices, compassion, even in defiance and fearlessness. It is an embryo that has been planted in all people ever since the sperm cell penetrated the egg cell membrane pouring into it a haploid number of chromosomes. Love is man’s natural state of being, altered by unnatural circumstances. If you wonder what sort of circumstances, it is enough to look out of the window. Out there, walls are being erected around people’s hearts and heavy rocks are falling on their heads, out there, there is no more difference between good and evil because the emotionally colour-blind are the loudest, they growl at the helpless and bow down to the high-and-mighty.

>>If you think that your love relationship with someone failed, you should know it was not love. Love always succeeds.<<

All this happens because you have forgotten that love is not blind, it is just that your ability to figure people out is flawed. Love can foresee, it knows in advance. If you think that your love relationship with someone failed, you should know it was not love. Love always succeeds. If out of sight, it is not out of mind, because love is not a measure of distance, but an essential part of the anatomy and functioning of all living creatures. It knows no distance, closeness, width. It only knows depths. It is only the empty-hearted and the full-bellied who say you cannot live on love, so you should not believe them. Love sustains life. It is not something to spread on your bread, love is the bread. And, if it comes to that, I would rather die with an empty stomach and my heart full of love, and let people say I was a poor man who knew how to love, than be remembered as a mean person who enjoyed his food.

And when the sky starts falling on our heads, when all those who say man is man’s wolf start biting those feeding hands for real, and when those that put their hands into the fire in vain for no one’s sake start screaming with burns, the real power of love will make us turn our palms towards the universe and shake up the Milky Way in order to clean it from all the shit. Until then, embrace more tightly, kiss more passionately, love less cautiously, cry more loudly, laugh more hysterically, make love more perversely and never, ever forget that every Man, however bad, is Love that has not learned how to love yet.

Translated from the Serbian by Svetlana Milivojević-Petrović

Ovaj post je dostupan i na: Serbian