What's love got to do with it?

I was in my middle twenties when I realised that I could not conceive any more babies. I didn’t know what had gone wrong exactly, (I found out much later) but the opinions I received from doctors at that time were laughable. One told me that awareness of over population had triggered me to ‘switch off’ my reproductive ability! Like a bunny in a crowded, cramped warren or a depressed mouse trapped in a scientist’s experiment.

‘Kinell’ (my Grand-dad’s favourite expletive is so appropriate at this point).

I remember exactly where I was and how I felt. It was an indefinable emotion then, so trying to express it in words now is impossible. I let that emotion colour my thinking for a few days and I meditated on it.

Suddenly it dawned on me that I did not have to physically procreate to satisfy my maternal instinct. I could just love everyone as IF they were my own!

This simple idea appealed to my personal form of logic. I could not possibly quell natural maternal instinct, and neither would I want to. It was simply a matter of directing the instinct to a much wider destination and thereby actually expanding it exponentially rather than contracting it to oblivion. What a terrific idea!

Have you ever taken good LSD or fresh psilocybin mushrooms? I have, a few times. Well, the burst of maternal instinct that accompanied my decision was JUST like a trip. Maybe I had triggered a ‘flash-back’ or released extra doses of dopamine? I couldn’t say, but I was ecstatic and eager to implement my new attitude immediately.

Fast forward to 2023……

I still feel that maternal love. It expanded ad infinitum to include all forms of life, all cosmic forces and infrastructure. It searched deep into the nature of things to glimpse the minutiae, recognising the micro within the macro. All of which is very easy to love, by the way.

The difficulty I am having, in the present, is another ‘indefinable emotion’. It is a mixture of indignation, rage, sadness and bafflement. It is colouring my thinking, but this time for weeks on end. It has stopped me from reading and writing.

If you have followed my writing over the recent decade, you will know that this has never happened before. I have been fully engaged in the various social media sites where I held accounts. I would write almost every day.

I figure I owe an explanation.

Maybe the events of the recent three years have so shocked me that I am numbed and dumbed? Or maybe I have bashed my head against that same old brick wall a few times too many? Maybe the echoes of my unheard warnings are returning to their point of origin, empty and useless, tired and too late to help anyone.

Maybe I am just angry to have been cancelled, rejected and diminished by judges and juries that never met me, yet sentenced me to permanent social isolation because my thoughts do not mimic theirs…. maybe….

Maybe I didn’t love them enough.