This isn’t a drill: I feel my soul on fire!

Until he found his place, his life felt like a pilgrimage.

He kept looking for a place where he could say: this is where I belong.

As he built friendships looking for a place to belong to, he found the meaning of community.

His friends were his chosen family.

He did not grow up wealthy, neither did he inherit a sense of belonging.

And yet, his friend thought it appropriate to challenge his allegiance to their cause by asking

“Is this a game, for rich young boys to play?”

That left him hurt.

His friend knew that he was well aware of the extent of the chains one receives

From abject poverty.

He wasn’t getting cold feet.

He wasn’t trying to mock the higher cause.

He wasn’t behaving carelessly, treating their endeavour as an amusing gamble.

With his friends, he found his keen.

There was no greater cause, i.e. nothing was more meaningful, in his eyes, down to his core

Than the well-being of his community.

That was until he saw her.

He had seen women before.

He had been approached by women hoping to love him.

He had had his chances at trying to play the game of love.

Meeting her was different.

When his friend scolded him, he was speechless.

How could this beloved friend challenge him in his sense of belonging?

He was hurt until his friend used the argument they both knew was inappropriate

As in inapplicable: He is as dead serious as he is committed.

Not only is he neither a boy nor a rich young boy, but he has lost his sense of play a long time ago.

He is not trying to gain something for himself: he wants to spare his community from the taste

Of a life with limited possibilities.

The only constant in his life was the reminder of the hard truth by which the only fact that he was

Born poor

Sufficed, every single time he faced a significant crossroad, for him to be told:

“No. You cannot afford.

Take the other route, or return to where you’re from, but you are not welcome.”

Along the way, he met:

People who “wanted more”

People who were “afraid to lose”

People who wanted “to be remembered for having done something memorable”.

Meanwhile, he wanted to belong.

For him to belong, he needed to find :

People who didn’t tell him he didn’t belong with them, i.e. somewhere he would be welcome;

Something to contribute to the community he wanted to belong to, i.e. have a sense of purpose;

Love.

Until he met her, all he knew about Love was:

What he had read about the thing;

What his friends said about the thing;

What he had imagined Love would mean, based on what he had read and heard.

Based on that knowledge, he pictured what a woman he could love might

Sound like, look like, be like.

As he went through his life looking for a community to belong to, he met countless women.

None of them seemed to have what it took for him to feel like she was the woman he could love.

Many sounded nice, twice as much looked good, thrice as much were more than fine.

He was not picky, yet none of them seemed to hit the mark.

Seeing his friends in love and listening to their love stories, he started wondering

If his lack of Love

Had to do with relentless standards, misconceptions, or bad luck.

Thinking about his friends and the kind of endeavours they could go onto, together

Helped him stay confident in the fact that he was on the right track, following his calling.

That’s when lightning struck him.

“I feel my soul on fire”

He met her, and he knew.

He knew she was the one:

Without knowing who she was;

While what she sounded like didn’t matter;

All the while what she looked like was accessory.

He could barely see her. She was all dressed and wearing garments hiding

Her shapes and everything.

Her bosom, her bottom, her ankles: none of them were showing, when he was struck by lightning.

His friends liked to talk about such parts of a body to extrapolate on what they fancied

And here he was, head over hills for a woman who could have been hiding her parts under layers

Of all sorts of fabrics: coffee bean bags, men trousers, Parisian haute couture… whatever!

He couldn’t even remember what she was wearing, when he got struck by lightning for her.

What she wore and what she was covering under what she wore had nothing to do with him loving her.

“What was right” suddenly “[seemed] wrong”:

As much as everyone he knew talked about bodies

(Their parts;

The garments with which they were covered;

The strings, metals, and stones with which they were made shinier, etc.)

To describe what they loved in another person

Her body was secondary to him loving her.

He met and fell in love with a soul, incarnated in a body.

That simple nuance changed everything.

Having met her, he could no longer conceive talking primarily about bodies, on the subject of Love.

What used to seem right, in the middle of a conversation with his friends, suddenly felt plain wrong.

Of course, he wanted to love her, therefore he wanted to be near her, and eventually touch her.

Her body was part of the equation, but it wasn’t the anchor.

He saw her a few times, before she disappeared with her father.

He was able to speak with her.

Through their conversations, he discovered a kind, brave, and humble soul.

Whatever she was into, whatever she had to say, whatever she dreamed of doing

With her life, according to their conversations, passed through these three filters:

She was always kind.

She only sounded brave.

She looked like the humblest soul he had ever met, men and women alike.

With every new conversation, he got further struck.

How could she exist?

How was she possible?

How long could he resist the temptation of asking her for more than enchanting conversations?

She lived with her father. They had to go. Her father learned about him, and he said: Go.

Her father did not approve of him.

For all sorts of reasons, he would spend the rest of his life regretting, her father prevented

His daughter from committing to a relationship with a man she loved and who was found of her.

When he sees his friends on the evening they learn about the sign they were waiting for

Marius is heartbroken because Cosette is gone, and he didn’t follow her.

Her father said no, and Marius let her go.

He knew he was going to risk his life with his friends, and that she was safe, away with her father.

Therefore, when his friend dares challenging him in his core, insinuating that his love is just a fling

Preaching to his choir about the meaning of their endeavour and the courage needed to fight

Against infamy and incarnate NO SURRENDER!

Marius finds the angle to talk back, respectfully.

By the time Victor Hugo (and Juliette Drouet) wrote Les Misérables,

He knew the pitfalls of a revolution without Love.

One he could draw from, among many, is called: La Terreur.

As much as a higher cause makes “little lives [not] count at all”

And one must be able to commit to dying for the greater good

No life is worth living without Love.

No cause is higher than Love.

No cause has ever been higher than Love.

No cause will ever be higher than Love.

Marius didn’t understand what Love meant, until he met her.

Marius will risk his life, fighting for the higher cause:

Not because Marius “wanted more” out of life;

Not because Marius was “afraid to lose” anything or anyone;

Not because Marius wanted “to be remembered for having done something memorable”.

 

Marius will risk his life, fighting for the higher cause, because he wants to contribute to helping

“This too” to pass

Eager to survive as he contributes to the fight, so that he has a chance at returning home, to her

 

A life without her is meaningless to him.

A life with her is impossible, under their current circumstances.

A life that is worth fighting for is a life worth dying for

IF AND ONLY IF

Once he is gone, he is with her.

He will fight the battles with his fingers crossed, hoping that her dad will let them get married

So that they can be bound in holy matrimony, and rest assured that "Dieu réunit ceux qui s’aiment"

***

Pour se souvenir qu'il a existé plus d'une révolution qui s'est rapidement soldée

Par l'oubli des valeurs qu'on entendait initialement invoquer

Et en profiter pour repasser Céline Dion sur la Tour Eiffel, sachant chanter

Et rappeler discrètement que Victor Hugo comme Édith Piaf croyaient en l'éternité

Et avec elle, en Dieu.

 

Signé :

🌻 Savato Kiriako 🌻

 💘