LOVE IN THE AGE OF CAPITALISM

Nowadays, when it is more important to have than to be, when your worth is measured by how much you manage to acquire, not by how much you can give, when only what is expensive is beautiful, and not what is valuable, when we take care of money, not people, real love has become elusive, imperceptible, even unimportant. It seems that it is unsustainable, unless it is sustained by credit cards, it dies of starvation unless it is fed in expensive restaurants, it comes late unless it is chauffeur-driven in luxury cars, it does not sleep peacefully unless it keeps cash hidden under the mattress.

They lied to us we could buy it, we erroneously mistook it for a weakness and left it to its own devices, without any rights, to struggle for survival in capitalism. To hide in corners from heart kleptomaniacs, to run away from love dealers, to shake before capitalist hate smugglers who have their hands full these days. We let people be afraid of it, shun it and steer clear of it. People have started identifying love with measles by mistake. They say that you usually catch true love when young. Once you do, and you get over it, it will never happen to you again. Lie.

True love is a chronic disease that, once caught, is carried through the whole life with a smile on your face. It is even easily transmitted. Through touch, kissing and sex as well. It is even resistant. It is immune to external influences, it does not change its structure through the years and every half-life decay of its atoms only makes it stronger. It even shows remission signs. It returns when you think you have got rid of it, shakes you like a fever even though you are in good health, it teaches you a lesson, serves as an eye-opener and does not leave you alone until it makes sure you are broken.

I fall in love with perfection, but I love all your imperfections with my whole being. It is so easy to fall in love with the perfect, it is even expected. In order to really know what it means to love someone, you must love someone’s imperfections. We run away from that because it requires belief, letting go, giving in and fearlessness. Love knows no fear. What is there for me to be scared of, when I know that even if somebody ripped my heart out of my chest, I can love and forgive so much that all that force would make a new heart grow.

My love sends ripples under your skin, because you get goose bumps on your skin too easily from the cold. My love slurps your spinal cord because lips are too easily slurped by fake kisses. My love plays red gloves with your lust because it is too easy to get laid driven by urges. My love inhales your morning breath because it is too easy to get intoxicated by a branded perfume. My love can even make a rainbow change its colours, just tell me what colours you’d like.

Everybody is trying to be somebody’s best, first or one and only, but we should actually be enough to somebody special, their last and unique someone. I know that I can certainly do that much, and that it does not require much effort. Although it is on the verge of survival in the age of capitalism, I am the maverick who helps love defy extermination believing that Love will survive as long as it lives in the age of Man. Good Man.

Translated from the Serbian by Svetlana Milivojević-Petrović

Ovaj post je dostupan i na: Serbian