A thousand kisses deep. If one were to kiss once per day every day, Kiss 1000 would arrive around two years and nine months later. The idea of being a thousand kisses deep into a relationship (and beyond) holds a fascination for me.
When a relationship first starts, the intensity of feeling generally comes from the newness of it all. The mystery that is the other person holds an infinite degree of possibility waiting to be explored. The presence of that mystery typically coincides with “being in love.” However, the mystery fades as the other becomes known. Superman becomes a mortal man. Superwoman becomes a mortal woman. With the faded mystery often goes the feeling of being in love. Many relationships end there. However, it’s when you move beyond the waning feeling of being in love towards the knowing of the other that the action of loving begins. Loving the other with full awareness of all their foibles, inadequacies, and bad habits and off moments. Loving the other, often, in spite of themselves. Loving the other when their present-day reality is severely diminished in comparison to the dazzle of their initial possibilities. Being in love is a feeling, a state of being. A passive state, if you will. However, truly loving someone is an action. It is something that you do…
Years ago, I was a member of an old church built in 1867. The church was located in the center of Atlanta’s historic Black community and its members were especially active during the Civil Rights Movement. Unlike the mega-churches in Atlanta that offered prosperity preaching with a side of super-sized salvation, this church was small and simple. It was just the right size for my people watching. The people I watched the most? The older couples who came to church together most Sundays. Creatures of habit, most people sat in the same seats each week and I did the same (this goes for almost anywhere I go repeatedly). Each Sunday, I would look forward to watching couples in their seventies and even eighties arrive together and sit for worship. After having been together for decades, it seemed as if they were no longer two wholly separate individuals but two people who had spent the majority of their lives together to the point where they merged into a unit. They had their own synchronized rhythms about how they entered and sat down. Each Sunday as I sat watching the couples, I marveled at how serene and content they seemed to have been and wondered how could I ever move from being unceasingly, unrelentingly single to accomplishing that type of relationship longevity. I still don’t absolutely have the answer (or better yet, the relationship that reveals or supports the answer). But my guess is that along the road of their relationship they faced many types of hurdles, temptations, disappointments and setbacks. However, looking at the couples it seemed as if the act of loving, the commitment to the act of loving, in spite of the other circumstances, carried them forward to a point where foibles, bad habits, inadequacies and off moments were small, distant blips on a long-lived love. Truth is, no one is perfect. Not the person with whom I may fall in love. Nor me in the eyes of the person who may fall in love with me. I’ve experienced loving someone for a period long enough to know that, yes, I am capable of loving someone for who they truly are, in spite of themselves. At a certain point, I remember making conscious decisions to remain involved with him. I chose to continue the act of loving him. I could have just as easily chosen not to. At a later point, I did choose to love him differently – not in a relationship. The love is still there, the circumstances have changed. I’m sure the couples that I saw in church, years down the path of their relationships, had already passed the choice point(s) years ago and possibly several times but chose to remain. My relationship was obviously not meant to be one of longevity, although we do remain in contact as friends. The lesson(s) remain with me though. In spite of the ending and because of its occurrence, I still hold out hope for the relationship that goes “A Thousand Kisses Deep.” And beyond. Here is one of Leonard Cohen’s takes on the concept of a “Thousand Kisses Deep.” This piece has been a work in progress for years so this is only one variant. Not to be confused, he has a song with the title “A Thousand Kisses Deep” that is different from this.