What does love look like?
Well, there are as many answers to that question as there are blades of grass on a footy oval but let’s look at one answer that I found while watching Marco Polo a stunning Netflix series.
Our two lovers in this example are the characters Lotus ( Michele Yeoh ) and One Hundred eyes ( Tom Wu ) the scene I’d like to draw your attention to is a unique and poignant one.
One Hundred eyes who is blind but in the tradition of the Martial Arts genre shows few, if any signs of blindness, able to move about, fight with unmatchable prowess, and perceive that which the eyes almost always miss.
Through selfless and selfish acts on both their parts, these two lovers are separated, though the love between them only grows stronger.
Suddenly their obits realign and Lotus finds One Hundred Eyes, the lover she thought was lost to her, working out in his Dojo. Lotus watches from the shadows, being careful not to make a sound.
As she moves out from the shadows a single tear falls and One Hundred Eyes knows he is not alone.
Being a highly skilled martial artist herself Lotus cannot resist the opportunity to get closer to her long lost love, she stealthily moves closer & closer shadowing his every move and with every strike & block he employs she moves in until the breadth of a hair is all that separates them, their movements in perfect sync ….
It is that synchrony that One Hundred Eyes perceives, the balance that can be achieved with only one other person that he has ever known but she evades his touch stays just outside his reach…
Each attempted parry & thrust finds nothing but air but still, he knows she’s there!
And then she’s gone.
It’s mournful, torturous and at the same time glorious and exciting and heartbreaking.
This time we are living through as Americans has a lot in common with this scene and may teach us something about how we are, with... to... each other.
Will we forever be like these separated lovers?
Maybe not but we should at least try to acknowledge that we are in some sort of relationship, and that requires that we work on it and as of the time of this writing we have done precious little of that.
People that want love, a society that wants love behaves in a way that unashamedly walks toward that goal and sadly we have not ever behaved in that way, as a people, even though we have had many examples shown to us throughout our history.
We sometimes forget all the ways we have been shown to express that pure emotion we call love but we shouldn’t, it is that connection or should I say the lack of connection that is the thing that we have lost sight of …
As good a slogan as it is I don’t think what we need is “ to make America great again”
Am I saying something so incredibly trite as “all we need is love “?
Well, maybe it is what we need!
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