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What’s the hurry?
After all, one of life’s greatest joys is finding oneself in a moment of pleasure and lingering there as long as possible instead of racing on to the next item on the agenda. May I refer to it as singular sensations?
I recently caught myself planning an evening and determining the quality of the experience ahead by how many different possibilities and adventures I could line up in a row. You know what I mean–“we’re going out to dinner, then get in the car, drive to the movie theater, catch a flick, have some popcorn and then trail out for coffee afterwards with friends to discuss the feature we just viewed, closing off with returning home and …”
Get my drift? There are so many singular sensations in that plan of action that could be savored, but will be rushed through to get to the next experience, which may or may not be equally as fulfilling, but certainly will also be abandoned in order to stay on schedule. We have become a nation completely adept at planning fun–and never having it.
Nowhere is this more obvious to me than in the realm of kissing. When I watch a movie nowadays and two people meet and fall in love, they go through a few shenanigans to acquaint themselves with one another and then they kiss, leading to a cutaway shot to a bedroom sometime later, letting us know that the single kiss LEAPED into an evening of sexual intercourse.
Am I the only person who remembers how satisfying, fulfilling and terrifying kissing can be? Here is a positive aspect to abstinence–it does teach us to stop and enjoy the beauty of kissing. There is probably no other physical action between two human beings that universally expresses emotion and intimacy like kissing. Not even the sex act itself offers the same package of potential. Because candidly, sex can be very bland or even uninvited. But kissing is the cohesion of two wills at the same moment, to mesh agreeing purposes.
Does anyone remember the warmth of the breath of another human being just prior to making lip contact? How about the fragrance of the breath when you are so relieved to discover that your partner is not forbidding further contact? Can you recall when the lips meet for the first time–the moist tenderness of discovering that the pair on your face is making the pair on the other face sublimely pleased?
If the goal of every kiss is to end up in bed having sex, it is no wonder that our species is becoming bored. It’s like saying that every dinner must be followed by a movie, a cup of coffee, a discussion and, let’s say, sorting the laundry. Soon no one would ever want to have dinner.
I have never seen two people kissing who are prepared to argue, hurt each other, manipulate one another or cheat. It’s time for each of us to return to the power of the singular sensation–and linger there for a long moment to enjoy instead of rushing off into other pursuits.
I will no longer plan more than one event at a time. I will refuse to move on until I have drunken deeply of the cup of possibility. And I will never again in my life hurry through a kiss because I think it’s just a way to get something else.
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