How does a boy know when he’s found his girl? How does a man know when he’s found his woman? How do I know when I’ve found my baby?

You think it’s this one but she never comes round. You think maybe it could be that one, but the speakers slide past each other until drifting down unsatisfied like hungry gators in a barren swamp.

You think you can conjure her with an inner circling, “I want love! I want the one for me! I want my girl!” mantra. At least that protects you a little: the one lights your fire but ignores your torch is not showing you love, so your fixation moves off of her, giving everyone more breathing room.

You think you can turn your desire and love inside out, so that your longing passion and joyful affection go everywhere, become everything, encompass everyone. Well, kind of. Is it an inner parlor trick? It’s not quite a great wisdom, but maybe with the right attitude it could be?

But your attitude is perhaps a little lacking. Still, I think you can turn your unrequited love inside out pretty well and you can stick to your “I’m waiting for love” mantra pretty well.

Because you don’t know who will love you and who you will love. You don’t know where you can find requited love. So you shouldn’t ask for someone to requite your love, and you shouldn’t ask for some babe to become the one. You should ask to know everyone in the way that’s best for everyone and to find the way forward with everyone that is best for everyone and that you find your love and she finds you.

So you’re waiting on love. You’re looking for love. You’re looking for the one that fits you and accepts you as you are and forgives you for being as you are and who helps you grow into the man you mean to be–a man with enough gentle kindness for everyone and for all things, a man who lives well right up to the end and so dies well right into and beyond the end.

So then: wait for love. Take it easy. Love everyone as if your life and theirs depended upon it. Love everyone as if everything depended upon the purity of your love, upon joyful kind delight and gentle nuzzling regard.

Turn yourself inside out. Gush out love like a struck artery. Don’t choke on your own love, calling it someone else’s.

Author: Chance von Dance
Editor: Bartleby Willard
Production: Amble Whistletown
Copyright/Canned Laughter: Andy Watson