Apocalyptic Love
When the doomsday clock strikes midnight and the end of the world is upon us, is it only then when love can truly explode into our lives?
She was just so unbelievably different. Like a mystical being that had crash-landed into my life, except it was me that had travelled across the lands and worlds to crash-land into hers. She was someone that just didn’t fit into the litany of labels and offering of boxes I had to organise and understand people. She saw a world sparkling with magic, where life was an intricate orrery of energy and sensation designed for marvel and wonder - and we were at its centre! She danced in an authenticity that was as captivating as it was bewildering. She spoke in a broken poetry that gave new meaning to words you’d heard a thousand times before. Her face radiated in a brilliant beauty that shone from her sunrise soul. Who was this angel in an earth suit? This miracle wrapped in miracles? And what had I done to deserve an adventure or even an audience with such an otherwordly being?
Our worlds first collided in the fiery hurricane of Brazil’s Rio Carnival, deep in the celebratory war zone of Copacabana. Crowds beyond the eye, music beyond the ears, exploding fireworks of great laughter and love meant merry bedlam was abounding all around. Amongst the swirling chaos and against unfathomable odds we crashed! Shining smiles spread in synchrony creating a siloed stillness in the eye of the storm. The busy, whizzing, whirring madness whipped around us while we were immersed in the tranquillity of a perfect moment. Time held its breath as we breathed in each other. Then a kiss. A kiss that lasted a lifetime and back again. How was all this even possible?
Armed with eyes dark enough to hold the secrets of the universe, she outstretched her hand and grabbed mine - and we ran. Like a pair of pacing jaguars, we hurtled through the streets and through the masses to the beat of the samba saturnalia and the cheers of the thousands lost within it. So far and so fast, faster and further. Our hearts charged through the hurricane, outrunning everything we’d ever known about love, forgetting the deep scars and burns from past flames and pains, leaving the towering protective walls we had built up so high to tumble down to dust in our wake. We flew into our own wild world - lightning couldn’t keep up with us.
The powerful, almost cosmic entities within one’s internal universe; the planets of mind, body, soul, spinning around the suns of logic, lust and love. The great hope that one day these fantastical forces would align, not only to one another but to those of another, creating a dazzling constellation of happiness, rapture and rhythm across the skies of your future. But to actually achieve such a grand design was either the belief of fools or the work of the gods, surely? Well, we may have been fools in love but I knew I was a mere mortal in the midst of a goddess.
That frenzied first day of hurricanes and sunrise souls overflowed, again and again, joining together sun and stars of two dream-dazed weeks. But from the start, the clock was against us. My journey around the world had only just begun. I was just three weeks in with four months of flights, bookings, deposits and plans already paid and laid out before me. One thing was certain, the ravishing euphoria of Rio had to come to an end. But in the tick, tick, tick of our time tocking down against the inevitable and imminent end of our wondrous little world came such a fervour, such a furious and fabulous ecstasy that I had never felt more alive in my life.
As in any moment, there is always a choice to approach a situation with either fear or love. Fear would have meant seeing the inevitable end and finishing things as swiftly as they began, it would have meant choosing not to jump in, not to follow the excitement or seek out the adventure, leaving only two options. Either bathe in tragically ignorant mediocrity or, and most likely, spiral into a mad, murky chasm of what-ifs, could-haves, should-haves and if-onlys that would have resulted in spectacular stress and regret.
To lead with love was to simply accept the situation for what it was and make a commitment not only to each other - but to the extraordinary. Just how great a tale could we tell of our time together? When the world is going to end, what is there left to do but savour and soak up every last moment any way you can? You can’t stop the clock but you can make every second count. After we embraced this realisation, life became awash in such an awe-inspiring, blissful simplicity, a hyperpresent state that relegated all other priorities, worries, fears and thoughts to a distant echo. There was only her, and there was only me. We didn’t have long but we did have each other and together we would try to write the greatest last chapter we could.
That is Apocalyptic Love - to create meaning in the face of meaninglessness. There are so many times in life when we find ourselves wondering what are we really doing with our lives? What’s the point of it all? Is there any meaning to any of this? So much confusion and frustration and yet, the answers are only a glance away. On these particular evenings of existential inquisition, raise your gaze to the star-drenched skies above, because to understand our life in this world is to understand our life in this universe. Behold, the never-ending eruptions of creation, death and rebirth. Behold, the everlasting oceans of celestial fantasia. Behold, an infinite world of infinite worlds! And we are but a speck. A pale blue dot of insignificance. The flashest of flashes, lost in space and time like tears in rain. There can be no meaning in this existence of ours. Consider too, therefore, equal merit of meaning to your greatest quandaries, your greatest enemies, your greatest errors! It is within this context that elicits such freedom of endeavour. Do your worst, but do endeavour! The meaning of this life is that it is simply up to you, your life means whatever you want it to, fill it with whatever means most to you.
So, in the face of cataclysmic certitude - you must provide the meaning, you must seek out the opportunities for truth, resonation and connection, you must create all the life and luminescence you possibly can. When faced with a gift worthy of the gods - dive in. Commit to the now and put in the effort and investment needed to take the journey with that special someone - no matter how short or long it might be. Make it amazing. Let curiosity be your guide and learn everything you can about them; how they think, how they live, how they love - how they do all things. Celebrate, cherish and champion them. Make what you have between you mean something. Make what you have between you mean everything. Remove all judgements and assumptions about peoples and cultures, races and backgrounds. Don’t just empathise but learn and understand their realities. Don’t just walk in their shoes but try to see the world through their eyes until you can feel with their heart. Stand in their shadows and show them you’re not afraid of their dark. No judgements. No expectations. Just love and compassion, warmth and acceptance. Surrender to exploration and swim in their soul! Dwell in it. Then dive in, over and over again, deeper and deeper.
Is it sad when the clock finally stops? When the world has to end? Yes. Truly. When I left Rio, despite both our best efforts, that melancholy morning when we said our goodbyes turned out to be the last time we ever saw each other. There was such sorrow that day and many days after it; but there was also a profound sense of gratitude and appreciation. We saw ourselves as outrageously lucky, blessed that we had even been given what time we did have. The heartbreak we both felt was testament to the authenticity of the love, belonging and deep meaning we had for each other and of our time together.
To embrace the full human experience is to embrace both great happiness and great sadness and everything in-between as part of the magnificent ride that is life. This is a fundamental of Apocalyptic Love because it’s what it means to be alive. The more you feel, the greater the breadth of the emotional spectrum you can embrace, the more alive you become. For this reason, I’ve found it crucial to remember in the darkest hours of the darkest nights, no matter how heavy the pain or sadness, not to allocate negative labels to those emotions. Just because you’re in pain, doesn’t mean that it’s ‘bad’, and not to say that it is ‘good’ either. This is just the journey. This is what being alive is all about. Be present to how raw those feelings are - they are simply reminders that you are in fact alive. Don’t hide from these emotions, face them, look them straight in the eyes and say thank you - thank you for making me feel the most alive I have ever been. The highs follow lows and the lows follow highs and it’s the contrast and experience of both that adds richness of value to the other. No matter how low the low, it is always temporary with a high just around the corner. Having been that low, how much more resplendent will that forthcoming high feel? And knowing that the high too shall pass, how much more does one treasure and appreciate it? Welcome to the full human experience. Don’t just survive it. Revel in it. Thrive in it. Use it to cool your fears and fire up your soul; to go forth, dive in and discover everything this world has to offer. Apocalyptic Love waits for you there.
If these pandemic years have reminded us of anything it is just how fragile the human condition is - you never know when the end of your world will actually be. You don’t know how much time you have left. Nobody does. So what choice do you have but to seize every opportunity you can to create a life bursting with as much feeling and meaning as possible? We all are living life against the clock, but the clock is not to be viewed as some gesture of impending doom or some standard-bearer of tragedy and mourning, but an alarm bell to shake awake our soul! Sometimes it takes a reminder of death to make sure we’re actually living life.
For those of us with more complicated and intricate pasts, this suspension of reality can be a path to a freedom rarely explored. The removal of tomorrow is the removal of all anxiety, worry and concern for the future. Suddenly all that weight is lifted, and gone with it are all the debilitating self-developed protections that come with it; the walls, the guards, the masks, the shields, the armour. You are finally free from it all. And maybe, just maybe, this beguiling bankruptcy of time as we know it is just enough to let us give love a fighting chance for a change.
The question of Apocalyptic Love is actually not ‘Who would you want to watch the end of the world with?’, the real question is ‘Who could you be with and be so enraptured by that you don’t even notice the world is ending?’
With front row seats to the last and greatest show the world has ever seen - where lies the gaze of its two audience members? Only at each other, captivated to the very end. Love is passion. Love is obsession. The challenge of Apocalyptic Love is to relish the intensity of love to the point of hyperpresence - total immersion. Only then can the clocks and the noise and the worlds dissolve and fall far, far away, pausing time and synthesising a single moment into an enchanting eternity.
Final Thoughts
Apocalyptic Love is a maximiser of life and is a mindset to embrace rather than an experience to try. To love fully you must live fully. Seek out those agents of the extraordinary, whether a long term partner or a short term stranger - follow the excitement; be ready, be willing, be open to the possibility of a grand adventure.
Have I got this right every time? Most definitely not, but the moments I did dive into revolutionised my perspective about love, about life, about people, about what it means to be happy, about what value I hold and offer the world, and about what value people in my life need to hold and offer me.
All you have to do is try. And if that means we need to bring back the doomsday clock to jumpstart things... well then, let the countdown begin!
