A Rule for Life

A lover is like a good book.

Or rather, I should say, a lover OUGHT to be like a good book.

If it’s an old lover, or book, it should be comfortable, comforting, but still able to reveal, as you go back to it time and time again, new layers, unexpected moments, depths and details you’d never suspected might be there. It should unfold anew, and much though you might have believed that you knew it, in its unfolding show you more than you’d ever possibly imagined, teach you things about yourself you’d never suspected, show you things about itself you would never have guessed.

This is what makes for your favorite books. Or favorite lovers.

If it’s a new lover, or book, on the other hand, then every moment of it should be a surprise, a revelation. It should be impossible to predict as the process unfolds, until it brings you to a place that, when your experience together began, you could never possibly have foreseen.

This is the thrill of a new, exciting book. Or a new, exciting lover.

And both, in their time and their place, when they come, are wonderful things. The old, the new, the comfortable and the thrilling. That which affirms and celebrates what you always knew about yourself, about the world, and that which shocks, which shakes you out of your comfort zone, which takes you to places you never thought might have been possible.

These are the things that life is made of, both in terms of great literature and great acts of physical love, and each in its place deserves to be appreciated for all that it is worth.

Because while life is short, it is still more wondrous than words could ever possibly express, and it demands at every moment to be celebrated.

Because you deserve to be celebrated. Every aspect of you, every quirk and kink, and to do less is to do yourself a grave disservice.

So find a good book, or a good lover, either old or new, and throw yourself into life with as much passion as you can muster….

…also, if you leave one splayed out, wide open and face down, bent over a table, for too long, you risk damaging its spine.

This too is true both of lovers and of books.

Still, there are times when it’s worth that risk; otherwise you might lose your place…