When I was small, I thought to savor things meant drawing them out and staying out of the way. Whenever I found something I deemed worth loving, I tried to make my way slowly, taking small, self-sufficient, and measured breaths to make sure the oxygen lasted. I learned early as a child there was a very real, grim possibility that you might love too much.
It took years of unlearning.
For a good, essential bit of time there, I thought in order for life to be worthwhile, I had to make the good things last. That the number I'd be granted was finite and quite insufficient for a human life. I was not wrong, except as it turned out, good things end anyway.
Try as you might, you can not draw out those tantalizing early days of discovering a new something for the first time. Songs, directors. I used to space them out across weeks to make that wondrous feeling last as long as possible, except it never worked. Leaving it so you'd have some later doesn't really work with that kind of love. And dampening fires doesn't make fires last longer, either. In what Universe would it?
I've been lucky lately. I keep discovering new art and new people to love. Just now, I'm curious about a playwright, as often happens with my deepest, hardest loves. It's always, inevitably, theatre-bound. And I thought I'd draw it out like I used to when I was a child, space some wonder out so I'd have some in June or perhaps next season. It doesn't work. It won't last.
Truly good, wonderful things do last, but that's not in any way tied to how fast or hard you fall in love with them.
We tend to measure things out, thinking that's a good way to avoid getting hurt, being disappointed, except it's not. It's only a way of living a lukewarm sort of life. Of being forever at half-mast, half-measure. Living life in two minds, with one foot in either boat.
You can't be half-in or half-out. Or at least, not with the things you love. I find, when something thrills you to the fucking core, that's about a good a time as any to jump. You learn to recognize them, as you go, the things that are worth pursuing.
But that doesn't make the choice for you. It's always an active choice. Go after it or not. Love it or not. Half-measure fires don't last any longer, though. And they don't keep you warm, either.
Or, as a much cleverer man once put it, go all the way, otherwise, don't even start.
