The complexity of simplicity

Note: This is a piece I’ve been working on for a couple of years (I always have a few ideas/drafts in progress) and isn’t a current ramble. I’m just clearing through some of my digital clutter and felt it was time to finish this up. I do, however, admit that the piece is a bit more poignant after having slammed doors.

The writing assignment was to write about a simple yet complex concept and is one that I struggled with because every time I tried to write, I feared it would be interpreted wrong. This is ironic in that writing is so simple, yet the reader’s interpretation can make things so complicated. But I digress…

Love is one of the most basic, simplest of emotions. It just happens. It just takes up residence in your heart and soul and it multiplies. You don’t have to work at love. It’s just there waiting for you to acknowledge it.

Yet for all of that simplicity, love brings some of the most complex emotions and feelings to life.

Love is an emotion that doesn’t work well without a counterpart. Love needs to be loved to flourish. It needs to have love showered upon it to grow. And when love isn’t returned with more love, when it’s not nourished with the positive emotions of another, it writhes in pain.

Romantic love or platonic love – when it’s unrequited it becomes complex.

The moment we’re not loved back, we doubt ourselves; we wonder what is so unlovable about us. The moment we’re not loved back, we begin to worry that no one will ever love us; no one will ever want us.

The moment we’re not loved back, the very vessel that contains the emotion is destroyed: Our heart.

And once our hearts are destroyed, they become forever fragile. And if we find ourselves loving again, we begin to worry and fret that that love, too, will be unreturned. And that worry makes us hesitate.

And much like when it’s unrequited, when we hesitate about the most basic, simplest of emotions it becomes complex.

Yes, in all of its simplicity, love easily becomes complex.