The things we write...

I found myself on the floor with four 8 year-olds yesterday during recess. I'm supposed to be overseeing the children as they play, however one thing led to the next, and I found myself on the floor, legs crossed, being asked a million questions about my music.

"You write songs?"

"Yes, I do."

"About what?"

"Many things."

"Like?"

"Like...love, loss, people, forgiveness..."

"What do you write about love?"

It was a fairly simple question. But I really struggled to answer it. I told them I write about love and how beautiful it is, but also about how some people don't know how to take care of it, so we have to surround ourselves with people who appreciate it as much as we do. It seemed like such simple answer to give, and I reassessed it when I gave it to the girls, to make sure it came out right. As they dispersed back into mayhem, I got up and thought about what I had said.

It's funny.

Why do we give our hearts to people who don't deserve it? Furthermore, why do we hope that people will change? Or imagine them to be different?

I went back last night, and poured over my lyrics, reading things like "I wish you well" and "So easy for you to walk away" and "words are nothing but a way to exhale" and even my most recent work, "as soon as we peel back the covering, we see something that is ugly, or missing, or incomplete." And then it hit me. I write about how people don't take care of love. And my message is to stay away from those kinds of people. And yet...I don't do that.

Whether it's knowingly, or unknowingly, I gravitate towards people who cause pain. And it made me wonder. Is it because that feeds my creative energy? And people are more likely to be touched by pain than love in music, because suffering is the human condition? Or do I have my own issues that I need to deal with?

Maybe both?

I don't know.

In Love With Two People?

Let me ask you a question: Can you be in love with two people at the same time?

Now mind you, I've always thought the possibility of loving two people simultaneously was absolutely ridiculous. I mean how can your heart beat wildly for two different people, your face grow hot for two different people, your stomach ache for two different people? I've always been with the "fall in love with one, forever" school of thought, but after one conversation, one experience, one gut feeling, and one stupid third installment of a movie series later, I am reconsidering.

See the thing is, I think that people come together and part ways, fall in and out of love, but all in all, keep moving forward. They tell the same stories, sometimes even the same jokes, just with different people. But they carry their stories with them through it all. So let's say I fall in love with someone, and I share my life with them -- you know, those stories we repeat about family, friends, where we've lived, etc., and it doesn't work out. Then sometime later, I meet someone else. And I share these same stories, just with a different person. However, sharing them with a different person makes it new somehow. Know what I mean? But you still have your past. That never really goes away.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that sometimes...we find different parts of ourselves with different people. And I think ultimately, after all of the confusion, heartache, and mistakes, we make a choice. What is this choice? I think most of the time we haven't got a clue until we make it. But I think that that choice has to do with how well the other person fits us. How that person fits who we are. NOT who we want to be, or who we want to be FOR them. Just for us. As we are. No changes, no alterations...just us.

However, even though I believe that a person can have feelings for two different people, I think that deep down, one of those two wins out in the end. I think that if that person were forced to choose right then and there, life or death, kiss or never be kissed, they would make a choice...a choice that was obvious for everyone on the outside, just not for the people on the inside.

So do some people look back and wonder? How about that guy dancing with his wife on their 25th anniversary, whose mind involuntarily wanders to that bus ticket he never used? Or that girl whose married with two children, who in the middle of her grant proposal thinks about that date she never went on, with that amazing guy she had met unexpectedly? We all do it. We all wonder. We all have our "what if". However I think that if forced to choose, we would make that decision, thereby disproving that there is equilibrium between feelings for two people. The scale would tip in favor of "the one" we decide on. Then we'd know.

So is it possible to be in love with two people? Yeah, I think you can be. But I also believe that you love one a bit more than the other. Just enough to make you choose, when you absolutely must.