How Do You Make Love Stay?

The novel Still Life of a Woodpecker, by Tom Robbins, begs the question: who knows how to make love stay? He answers the question through the following three points:

1. Tell love you are going to Junior’s Deli on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn to pick up a cheesecake, and if loves stays, it can have half. It will stay.

2. Tell love you want a memento of it and obtain a lock of its hair. Burn the hair in a dime-store incense burner with yin/yang symbols on three sides. Face southwest. Talk fast over the burning hair in a convincingly exotic language. Remove the ashes of the burnt hair and use them to paint a moustache on your face. Find love. Tell it you are someone new. It will stay.

3. Wake love up in the middle of the night. Tell it the world is on fire. Dash to the bedroom window and pee out of it. Casually return to bed and assure love that everything is going to be alright. Fall asleep. Love will be there in the morning.”

Although I want to believe that cheesecake, a lock of hair, and putting out a fake fire with urine will make love stay, there is no answer to this million dollar question. The true reality of life is that you cannot make love stay.

If love wants to stay, it will stay.

So maybe the questions should not be how to make love stay, but how can you believe that love will stay? Here are my two cents.

1. Call love at 3:00 AM. If love answers and speaks as though time does not exist, love will stay.

2. Tell love that you need to see the world. If they understand what a deeper understanding of the globe can do for you, love will stay. Love might even follow.

3. Tell love that you need to quit your job because you are unhappy. If love understands your potential and dreams, love will stay.

4. Convince love to climb a mountain with you. If love waits for your legs to find the strength with every meter of elevation gain, love will stay.

5. Share your fears with love and embrace any of the tears that follow. If loves appreciates your vulnerability, love will stay.

You will never need to beg love to stay because love will never want to leave. There may be times where love is far, but love will never be gone. Love will wake up every morning and no matter how grumpy or tired they are, the right love will choose to stay.