Forelsket

Ok, here we go! HA! Another word blog. Come on, I know you were just dying for it!

As you are aware, I love words. I have a journal that is completely filled with words I find interesting, strange, or in need of a new definition. Yes, I know it is arrogant to reassign meaning to things already defined with my own ideas. But I love it and will do it regardless of what anyone thinks to the contrary.

So the above titled word is Norwegian. And it used to describe all the completely indefinable feelings you have when you are falling in love. The euphoria experienced when your heart, body and mind connect with someone else who is experiencing the same euphoria, for the same reason.

I am elated to find that there is such a word, and will do my best to bring it into our current culture because I think our world could use more words like this. And the world is a better place when we all are falling in love with each other and are filled with the natural high of falling in love…

I have been feeling kind of down about the state of the world, most especially the American world. How we are and how impossible we seem to make relatively easy tasks. Like loving. How there are all these people unhappily married, all these unhappily single people? Perhaps, because we have no words and concepts for things like forelsket, we are doomed to ever be different.

I am not sure I lived in a simpler time, one where words like forelsket are common and understood and a goal. But I want to live in that world. Where the way we treat each other and what we prioritize are the relations we have with others: our children, our partners, our families, our co-workers. This is what I wish for all of us. So that we can come to experience and know, intimately, this euphoria of falling in love, of being seen and heard and trusted and adored. This should be everyone’s fate, and yet, I can tell you that most people live their entire lives, partnered to someone who doesn’t even know them at all.

They are a union, but there is nothing unified in the way they do it. Constantly at odds with competing needs, longings and demands. It is so incredibly heartbreaking to see that we could all have this, this forelsket, but we have to come to know ourselves first and then be able to find the courage to ask for what we want, and find a truly willing partner who can show up for us in all the ways a partner should. And not make excuses to let the other off the hook when they fail, but instead to inspire a willingness and desire to do better, each of us for our own benefit and for the benefit of the other we love.

And it all starts with forelsket. Now perhaps since we have a word for it, we can begin to treasure it and tend to it and grow it in ways and manners that we have not been able to before…this is my most ardent hope for all of us. May you find someone who makes you euphoric, as you fall further and further in love with each other, committed to the mutual satisfaction of loving each other better with each passing day. And may you have the patience to wait until that person arrives…