Love and Circumstance

I’ve been debating this post for a while now. It’s a bit personal, but I feel it’s worth sharing. 

One of the things I’ve learned to respect through moving around so much is how much our lives are molded by the time and space we inhabit. For better or worse, we can only really be – physically, mentally, and emotionally – in one place at a time. We all of course still have agency, but that agency is bound by the circumstances of our everyday lives. 

And then there’s this thing called love. Love is a force to be reckoned with in its own right. Like circumstance, it gives meaning and shapes the trajectory of our lives in its own way. And as I’ve spent the last 10 years or so hop-scotching around I’ve noticed something: these two forces seem to forever be at odds with each other. 

Love – at least in my experience – has no respect for circumstance. It doesn’t care that you already re-signed your contract for another year, or that your visa is going to run out in six months. It strikes you when it pleases and puts your carefully constructed world on its head. It forces you to ask the question where is all this going and what am I doing? Much sooner than you’d like. 

Likewise, circumstance doesn’t give much regard to love. It just sets the stage on which your love plays out. And well, if love only decides to enter the show in Act 3, then so bet it – but circumstance ain’t budging. 

And so ensues the jostling, soul searching, and deep conversations as love and circumstance duel over who will take the day in this chapter of your life. As this duel progresses you imagine and play out the various plot lines this production could take in the few scenes you have left together with someone special. You try to think up new scenes that somehow prolong the performance just a bit longer, only to get bogged down in the details. Unfortunately there’s just no time to let things evolve naturally since – in the oddly fitting words of Semisonic – you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Love and circumstance are beating the shit out of each other, and if you don’t pick one then you might end up losing both. 

If you decide – as I often have – to let circumstance take the day, then love seems to run all the more rampant on stage until circumstance drops the curtain on this part of your life. You’re then left wondering that if things had been different, had love entered the scene in Act 1 instead of Act 3 you could have found a way to write a different end to the story. 

Towards the end of my time in overseas I began to tire of this eternal dual. I’d cut short too many blossoming relationships because either myself or my partner had other plans which carried us in different directions. It’s a cruel thing to let happen: to let circumstances dictate your love life. To let a relationship end not because it had run its course, but because your paths simply diverged. 

And yet, I don’t think I’d have it any other way. Just as I’ve borne witness to the power of circumstance over our lives, I’ve also come to understand that true love can only be found when you situate yourself in those circumstances in which you are wholly you. You cannot force circumstance to bend to the will of love, because love will only come on stage under the right circumstances – not necessarily right for your plans or ideas, but right for you, and by extension your love. 

And well, if my ideal circumstances are those of a vagabond, then I suppose I’m just a bit unlucky in that regard. Perhaps one day love and circumstance will agree to a truce in my life. But until then I suppose I’ll keep on writing cliffhangers into my relationships. Anyway, if you’re lucky enough to have found love in the right time and place, I want you to know that I am deeply happy for you. And if you haven’t yet, keep living life in the time and place that makes you most happy. There’s still life to be lived after all! 

Happy Valentine's Day y'all!