'Live and Let Love': Stories about Finding It, Keeping It and Appreciating It

Feb. 3, 2011 — -- Author Andrea Buchanan compiled honest and compelling stories about love from a soldier's wife, an award-winning actress and a college student.

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Live and Let Love

There is nothing more universal than love. It's what wedesire to feel, adore to bestow, fight to achieve, and grieve whenit's gone. Some would say love is the reason we are here . . . togive and receive it.

Since the dawn of humankind, love has been studied, pondered,pontificated and written about by scholars and sages ofantiquity. From Aristotle to Austen to Ephron, love unadornedand unrequited has been in style. The Holy Bible is one of theoldest texts to talk about love and can likely be credited withstarting the infinite fad: love is essential to living a faithfullife. One passage I find particularly striking in its definitionof love and its meaning was written by the Apostle Paul inI Corinthians:13.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries,and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I canremove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.I first started to understand that passage when I was fourteenyears old. Saint Paul imparted to me that even with exaltedpowers, and surrounded by gifts, without love everything else ismeaningless. I grew up in Texas and I had "found God" in asmall, nondenominational Bible church. No one else in myfamily went to church but me. I was in search of meaning andhad deep questions about faith, but I also had a crush on a boy,who would become my high school sweetheart. He was fifteen,had a car, and I was allowed to ride in it with him as long as Iwent to church and came straight home. So I did, religiously, toevery Sunday service (morning and night) and Wednesday eveningsfor Bible Study. I would hold Ben's hand on our car rides,and during the Sunday youth group pizza parties. Early on inthis phase, I memorized I Corinthians: 13, and would recite it tomyself. I was falling in love for the first time and I felt that thewords in Corinthians had been written just for me. It was amagical time and I can still recall the way I felt when I wasaround Ben like it was yesterday. It was so new, so innocent andpure. Whether we were driving with the windows down on a hotTexas summer night, or enjoying a first kiss under the bleachersafter a Friday night football game, or discovering one anotherunder the blankets on a van ride to Colorado, falling inlove for the first time was a religious experience.

Six years and a couple of painful breakups later, Ben andI had moved on to different colleges and other relationships.God, as defined by the Church, became less important to me.Love, on the other hand, was still a supremely high priority.

Live and Let Love

During this time, I embarked upon what would become a protractedjourney through bridesmaid's hell, where love hides,usually under yards upon yards of taffeta. Participating in the first wedding where I had to buy my own dress and matchingshoes, I took my place next to the other eight best friends andbridesmaids, and I had an unexpected pang of beautiful memoriesand love lost when the preacher read from Corinthians.He also took the opportunity to invite anyone who had not beensaved in his captive audience to come up and accept Jesus Christas their saviour before the groom kissed the bride. I like a good"two for one" sale, but even I thought it was a bit cheap. Aboutthat time, I saw my father, who is a striking six foot one andeasily agitated, stand up and walk out of the church to go have asmoke, while my beautiful mother stayed patiently in her seat.He was an agnostic, bordering on atheist, and unsavable, andshe would never leave before the curtain call. After a few lostsouls found their salvation as I did some knee bends to keepfrom fainting, the groom kissed the bride, the preacher readthe famous verse, and I quietly wept, mourning the passing ofmy youthful first love, and wishing that one day I might have awedding, without taffeta, but certainly with Corinthians.Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it isnot proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil butrejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, alwayshopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

While I no longer consider myself a practicing Christian, I considerbiblical teachings along with philosophical texts fromantiquity's timeless studies of love as more of an open-endedquestion than an absolute fact, and I highly value them as I attemptto understand love's layers and complexities. With lovethere is no absolute. There are some very smart people outthere who have studied this topic extensively. I'm certainly nota scholar of love, with minimal courses in philosophy at theUniversity of North Texas under my belt. My understanding oflove comes from the school of hard knocks. I speak from myown experiences of my heart opening and shattering from lovefulfilled and unrequited, as do my fellow storytellers in thisbook.

However, for a moment I'll put my scholarly shortcomingsaside to offer a quick refresher. The English etymology ofthe word "love" derives from the Germanic form of the Sanskritlubh—which means desire. And while desire certainly hassomething to do with feelings that seem like love, desire aloneis not love. As we all know, there are so many more forms oflove than just all-out-crazy-for-you lust. But lust can be a lot offun—and sometimes dangerous, which can just add to the rush.Case in point: my college crush, who I'll call John. We wereboth sophomores when we met. He was a Sigma Phi Epsilonfraternity brother and I was an honorary little sister to the fraternity.He and I loved to dance, and somehow our grooves fit.Every time a song from the band New Order would come on at aparty, we would find one another and clear the floor. Our connectionwas rhythmically deep, and I was madly in lust. Johnwas a dangerous bad boy with a lot of hard edges, and an incrediblysoft spirit. He was Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, andI wanted to be his "Baby." He rode a motorcycle, every otherword out of his mouth was of the four-letter variety, and whenwe weren't getting our groove on at fraternity parties we wouldtravel the forty miles into downtown Dallas and dance until theclubs closed.

Live and Let Love

There was always an element of danger when I was withJohn, and yet I always felt safe, because he had that Alpha male,badass thing going on. There was an abandoned warehouse indowntown Dallas that he knew about that graffiti artists used asa canvas. We would break into it and leave our artistic imprintwith a spray can, smoke some weed, and make out. It was in anundesirable and somewhat dangerous part of the city, and a farcry from my church days, but I loved the thrill of it. We werenever officially boyfriend and girlfriend, but that was okay, Iknew what we had was special, even if jail time was a possibleconsequence. I was hot for him and his Alpha nature. Philosophyinvokes this kind of love as Eros—the part of love constitutingsexual desire and passion. Erotic love is fun, it's sometimesdangerous, and I believe it's necessary, for without it none of uswould exist. I'm pretty sure John would agree.

The passionate relationship that John and I shared, overtime turned into more of a fondness and friendship. Aristotlewas obsessed with this kind of love, which he called Philia—afondness of one's family, friends, political community, job, ordiscipline. Loving family and friends comes pretty easily tomost people. Loving a job is a different story. I realize that intoday's world, where so many people are unemployed, the ideathat you love what you do is often a foreign concept. In a perfectworld, we would all love our work, but life certainly isn't perfectand loving what you do is a luxury that not everyone can afford.I've been fortunate in the work department and found somethingI love to do, but it wasn't always the case.

As a longtime producer of television in Hollywood, I had begunto feel dissatisfied with the kinds of projects I was involvedwith. So in 2004, an election year, I decided to make a documentary film with some friends about the March for Women'sLives in Washington, D.C. While the gig didn't pay well, it wasthrilling to be at the helm of a project that I found meaningful.My political activist side was lit up and I knew that for me,finding meaning in my work life was no longer a luxury, it wasan absolute necessity. After that project ended and I found myselfin a black hole of filming reality television shows, I longedfor something more. I longed to be in love with my work. Likesome of the contributors who share their stories in the pagesto come, I think falling in love with what you do can absolutelyresult in a healthy, satisfying relationship that offers plenty ofsustainment, in addition to the belief that finding love in anotherperson will come.

Live and Let Love

The final kind of love as defined by the Greek philosophersis beyond the earthly pleasures of lust, family, and work. It isthe all-encompassing Agape, which, appropriated by Christiantheology, is the paternal love of God for man and man for God.However, I would argue that Agape is the purest form of love foreach other. The concept that love is peace and mutual respect,if truly practiced and adopted, might end all war. Imagine that!John Lennon certainly did, and along with the other fab threeput that idea into words, giving us some of the best love songsever written. "All you need is Love"—the Beatles abridgedCorinthians!

A primer on how great thinkers define love wouldn't becomplete if I didn't include the man who wrote arguably themost powerful works on the subject: the Bard himself. Anyonewho has ever fallen hard can identify with Shakespeare's plays—particularly if they pick up one of his tragedies in the aftermathof getting dumped, since Shakespeare's idea of love unfulfilledwas tragic. You either love or you die, in the case of Romeo andJuliet or Hamlet and Ophelia.

When Ben, my first love, let go of my hand and broke upwith me, I felt like Juliet and Ophelia one hundred times over. Istopped eating. I cried all day, every day. I cried before school;during math, history, and English classes; and after schoolworking as a checkout girl at the Tom Thumb grocery store.The bags under my eyes were so big I could have packed themand gone on vacation. I literally begged Ben to take me back,in between sobs, sitting in his banana yellow Cutlass Supreme,where our hand-holding began. I told him I couldn't live withouthim, and I meant it. He was very sweet when he told mehe was sorry, it was over. And to top it off, my tragedy playedout the same week of cheerleading tryouts, which in Texasis tantamount to the Olympic Trials with pom-poms. To addsalt to the already open wound, I didn't make the cheerleadingteam. It was Rejection with a capital R. Fortunately, no onein my Shakespearean tragedy died. But it felt like death at thetime.

Eventually, I replaced the Shakespearean tragedy with aHollywood movie, "love at first sight" moment that I sometimes,even to this day, find hard to believe. Sixteen years ago Imet my husband, Jason, in a smoky, dimly lit bar thanks to anintroduction by Paul Rudd, who was just starting his acting career.Jason had just returned from a summer at Oxford Universitywhere he studied classical theater with the Juilliard School,and Jason and Paul became close friends. Paul convinced Jasonto make the move from New York to Los Angeles to pursueacting and he had been in Los Angeles exactly two weeks thenight I met him. Jason was a brooding artist, handsome, andhe was fluent in French. I thought he was out of my league, notjust because of the sexy foreign language thing, not to mentionthe Oxford thing, but because I didn't believe at the time thatI might actually fall in love with someone who would not onlylove me back but catch me when I fell and give me a hand so thatI could get up.

Live and Let Love

Up until meeting Jason, I kept trying to engage in love toplease the other person. After a particularly one-sided romancewith a much older man who gave me a jar of Dijon mustard formy twenty-third birthday, and the period of celibacy and selfsearchingthat ensued, by my twenty-fifth birthday I was readyto be in a relationship again. My dear friend and roommate,Jill, and I did an improvised "rain dance" in our kitchen, onlywe wanted it to rain boyfriends for each of us. We were veryspecific with our wishes: the guys had to be romantic, generous,enlightened, mature, smart, respectful, and nice. Which,at the time, seemed like a tall order, considering that my lastboyfriend, the Dijon-giver, broke up with me on Valentine'sDay. Within a week after that dance, I walked into that smokybar with a sense of peace and joy, and the proverbial lightningstrike happened the moment I met Jason. I remember sayingto Jill, "I'm going to marry that guy," like it was yesterday. Thewords flew out of my mouth as easy as "I'll have another drink."I didn't intellectualize the thought, I just felt it, and then I declaredit. It was a feeling that was born out of a primal instinct,a knowledge that the potential for love was in the room and withmy potential life partner.

Jason and I didn't rush into a wedding, by any stretch. Ittook us about eight years, and a lot of back-and-forth, to finallymake that commitment. By that point, all my years as a brides-maid, standing in taffeta, dreaming of the day where I wouldhear Corinthians, felt like someone else's life rather than myown. That girl was long gone, and this new L.A. woman, whohad looked for love in all the wrong places, was independent,somewhat confident, and certainly didn't feel like she neededa marriage license to be loved. The truth was, I was terrified tocommit on that level, on a government level, on a level that if Iever wanted to get out, I would need a lawyer, not just some cashin the bank and my car.

But the big day arrived, and I have a picture from it that Iadore. The image is of my father walking behind me holding mygorgeous Vera Wang gown that my sister, Cindy, so generouslybought for me, so that it wouldn't drag in the dirt. It was an outdoorwedding, at a friend's estate in the Hollywood Hills, andthe aisle consisted of a dirt path surrounded by ominous, large,prehistoric cacti. In the photograph it looks as though I amrunning and my dad is pushing me down the makeshift aisle,because if I take my time, I might change my mind. My mouthis making an O shape, and the caption, if there was one, wouldread: "Oh shit, I can't believe I'm doing this." It's definitely notyour typical serene, hopeful, smiling bride photo-op, but morealong the lines of Calamity Jane meets Runaway Bride.As we stood in the middle of a big circle of our friends witha Sikh guru and beloved friend as our officiant and minister,we included Jewish prayers, Native American rituals, and theBeatles' "In My Life" played on an aluminum cello bellowingacross the canyon. I framed that picture of me and my dad, andit sits on my nightstand to remind me of how far I've come; thatmy fear of losing my freedom or my identity was ultimately justa feeling, and that I would have never married Jason if losingeither one was going to be part of the deal. The truth is I feelmore liberated in this partnership than I did out of it. It was abeautiful day, and while we didn't read from Corinthians, it wasabsolutely divine.

Live and Let Love

Four years after our wedding day, I codirected and wrote ashort film about love and longevity in a marriage. In the script,Kris Kristofferson, who plays the husband, is caring for hisdying wife in an E.R. When asked by a young nurse played byRobin Wright what the secret to love was, he says, "Stay in theroom," which accounts for the theme of the film and speaksto the idea of not leaving when things get really difficult andwhen things don't come easy. That life lesson was impartedto me from a beloved therapist to many of my friends, and inturn to me through them, and we have used it throughout theyears whether we are talking about our friendships or our romanticrelationships. By staying in the room there won't alwaysbe lightning strikes, although those still happen, but more likesmall fires that continue to burn if they are stoked.

My life with Jason is the warm glowing fire that can peakwith vibrant flames—and we have stayed in the room togetherwhen the oxygen was thin and breathing was difficult. We'vemanaged to emerge stronger through it all, build a home, rescueand raise dogs, go through midlife crises, travel the world,and laugh until our cheeks hurt. And it's in this relationshipand the laughter and the litter that I have learned more aboutlove than anything else in my life. And the most profound selflovelesson that I have learned is that I am enough.

When I set out to collect stories about love, I was narrowlyfocused on the Eros brand of love stories; the romance, thepassion, the humor, and the redemptions. Not the Shakespeareankind per se, more the Sex and the City kind. However, alongthe way the collection became so much richer and deeper,thanks to the contributors' willingness and courage to look thetopic in the face and then look within themselves to find theirstrongest examples of it. Each woman in this book has her ownlove story that is up close and personal. The essays are reflectionsof joy and suffering from love, and within those layers,there are gems of wisdom and precious self-realizations thatneed to be shared. They are pictures of vulnerability, wickedlyfunny, and one hundred percent raw, and they have added tothe long narrative of love. In short, the women in this book aretruly awe-inspiring. I love each and every one of them.

My journey has taken me from the Bible to the Beatles, Erosto happily ever after, and while I still have a lot to learn on thetopic of love, I do know this: It is messy, it is heartbreaking, andGod, is it worth it. It is my wish that if you allow the layers, thelaughter, and the litter of love to envelop you, then you will notonly have loved but you will have truly and fully lived.

APBSeptember 13, 2010

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