Transitory

Life, love, relationships. All are transitory. Some come and go. Some stay for the duration. In the end though... we all of us must make that last walk... alone.

We are born alone. 
To die alone. 
But along the way, I pass you by. 
   Greetings fellow traveler.

Transitory. 
All that exists in life is transitory. 
Permanence is but an illusion.
Created from a desire to hold that which cannot be held. 

We behold. 
We love. 
Then, we desire to hold, to have, to possess, to keep unto ourselves. 

We wish to possess the love we feel.
Those we feel it for.
The essence of the nature of those we love.

As if we wish for life to ever stay within  this same moment. 
Feeling exactly like this.

It does not.
It cannot.

To possess another - it is as to grasp at the ether. 
Our external selves are not eternal. 
Our encasements are sentient, temporal and entirely temporary.
We have a shelf life.
    One which eventually comes to pass. 
Then, we must be returned for recycle.


We cannot own one another.  Nor should we. 
And yet we try.

All that we esteem we seek to possess.

Even that which defies definition we seek to own. 
The love, esteem, honor we see in or we bestow upon one another. 
We expect that these things are permanent conditions, 
    ... and that somehow, they should be partly ours because they were
          shared with us. 
We seek to demand them.  To require that they be maintained. 
And when they are lost to others, we mourn our own loss.  

Love is didactic, 
Fleeting, 
Floating. 

If we are lucky it visits us often. 
But also, it must take it’s leave. 
      Move on. 
As life and also as we continue to evolve... so must love. 

Author's Note

Thoughts on life, love, relationships. All of them. Not just the one.

Reviews

[bob, small b. aka invs]

this is beautifully expressed and i couldn't disagree with you more. though in practice and by experience, there is more supporting your position than mine, i HAVE to believe in the permanence of some things. love being among them. i don't think i've ever stopped loving anyone i ever loved. i've never deliberately ended a relationship with anyone i cared about. that doesn't mean ties haven't been severed. there are very few relationships that survive lifetimes. things get in the way. so in that way, you're right. things and people are transitory. but it's also possible that, in believing that, it makes it so. perhaps we today are commitment challenged. if we went into relationships looking at them as open ended rather than finite, perhaps they would last longer. sorry for the rambling. this is something i've been thinking a lot about lately. missing lost friends and wondering why.

[Chris]

I see your point of view as well bob and understand (through my own thoughts) your thinking a fair bit of missing friends and whys. Its kind of unique the way a thought brings out our own tangents.

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

I agree and I disagree with you. I think about my mother whom I lost in life, and my son who if very much vibrant and alive. Those are both cases of love eternal. Perhaps it is romantic or non familial love I speak to here. I think about those I have loved and who have gone left and I right at the fork in the road. The love exists eternally in what it was... but I find sometimes - most often, it fades away leaving only a memory of what it once was. Never as strong. Never as consuming. Just a kind memory that fades into a faded sepia hued photograph to be filed into my heart's memory. Always know I have loved and been changed by it, but I tend to leave that love at the fork and carry forward only photograph. I find it fits much better in the baggage that I tend to carry with me.

[Shimmerbliss/CAF]

This seems to be a night when I am fortunate to be reading some very thought provoking and heart clutching pieces. I am weaving myself through this, it has surrounded me and I am feeling it pressing against places I go often...usually alone. This world is temporary, at least for us...the shelf date...the vapor that cannot be held...the linger in the air of a scent that we breath deeply to gather it into us. My parents were a committed and special example of true love...forever...and yet, on the threshold of 60 years, my father died. My mother could not hold him, or keep him here...so, I asked myself, what is "forever love"? I am old enough to have experienced the pain of love in relationships, but more than that the pain of loving...loving so much that my heart aches even in times of joy because I know that nothing stays here, in this world, forever. My children, my sisters, my true friends we are all passing through. I think what this teaches me is that the now, this very moment, gone even as I write this, is precious...it is all we have. My memories are like snapshots, videos, songs that I replay and yet those moments are gone. I am going on and on and not even sure if what I write should be written here...you have moved me to feel some sore places, not in a bad way, but just the type such as my children baby faced, children's laughter, my father's blue topaz eyes, his voice, my mother's smile...all gone...and that is the way it should be...I cannot hold those moments, those years and I do not want to...it would be like dragging my foot outside a vehicle. Everything changes on the outside, and much on the inside, as we live life. We learn to try to take nothing for granted- not love, or time, or friends, or sunrise. We learn to appreciate joy when it comes, and love of any kind, knowing it, or we, cannot stay here forever. I believe that love is eternal, but not confined to this world. I believe love is like a magnet in the spirit, and love will find love whatever form it has when we no longer see with the eyes of our mortal bodies.
Well, my friend, I have written so much that I cannot even see it all. I am so fortunate to have found you and your writing here on this site. You have no idea what a bright and solid place you have in my heart. You are a tigress in your spirit, with the capacity to be gentle and fierce and the keen ability to know which one is appropriate.

[Shelley Holt-Lowrey]

This write - it creates an internal controversy each time I read it. I both agree and disagree with myself on many points in this piece. I have not responded to your reviews for this reason. Just sitting back and listening to your thoughts. To all - thank you for reading and taking time to comment. You are all greatly appreciated. Please know that!

[lee von cleef]

Good morning, CHRISTABEL, ( part 2) is really about friendship, brothers, who turn into mountains and have a river running between them. No Brad Pit did not star in or write it. Have some more coffee.

[Mark]

Wow. That's got to be some kind of a record: summarizing life, love and relationships--all of them, not just one--in a single poem. Not mocking here, applauding sincerely, because your points are all well-taken. Nothing is permanent, so do the best you can with what you get, and learn from what you lose.
Two small points: "come to pass" means 'happen', or 'occur', not end, which is what your context requires. You may want to reconsider that phrase. Also, I have (not bragging) an above-average vocabulary, but I had to look up 'didactic'. Jus'sayin'.

[lee von cleef]

demand , obey,submission,own,possess,these are not words of love,They are a blender of ....Pale emotions so heavy they weigh ,love is a feather that lifts your heart,love is a souls measure deep in your eyes, and love is a brand "The marks of that which once hath been" S T Coleridge ( CHRISTABEL ,Part two) So a transition yes,paddle to through the rapids mark the rocks,pull into a eddy ,lay back,soak in the sun and rest.

[lee von cleef]

wow, why ,s**t, now ,again you are going to make my brain burn here gos the night.
Love is a poets albatross with a wing span of eleven or ten feet.It stands on its own,it reaches across time,it blisters ,it turns you inside out,it is adelvice and flowers,it makes me stop now to pick up my daughter.So just you wait ,I will regroup and do my best to take a bite out of fleeting ,floating.

[MOON]

Sage advise, our need to posses is where our suffering comes in . The pain of loss heartbreak, we create the illusions . Understood on the theoretical level but one of the most challenging to actually love unconditionally

[Zeek4]

This too shall pass. I was seriously thinking about having this tattooed on my arm surrounding a ying yang. A serious piece. Sets ones mind to thinking.

[Ken Simm.]

I think you are talking about being 'in love' here not love itself. Eros rather than love of a child or family member. Amor is fleeting I agree but only insofar as it changes, always. Morphing into something else. This could be positive as in knowing someone better or a negative as in the failing of a relationship. More often it is the many shades of grey in between. Of course this is also true of the other kinds of love but those as I said those you do not discuss here. It is a truism to say that Eros tries to posess. This saying has been attributed to many including Dante and Einstein it is as follows 'Men marry women hoping they won't change but they do and women marry men hoping they will change but they don't.' I think this is so well written by the way.

[Ken Simm.]

Just re read this review and found myself way too much up my own arse so lets change it and say a more honest and forthright trememdous write Shelley. I love it.