T-18: Grateful for what we have

What it is with relationship disorder? It seems to swirl around us like fireflies. Is it a lack of choice or too much of it? It is fear, neurosis, or the calmness of knowing (or even not knowing)? Whatever it is, there seems to be a kind of emotional/romantic rupture occurring in so many people's lives.

Now it may simply be a case of identifying this stuff more now that an immense calmness has entered our lives. In comparison with all the goings-on in friends' relationships, what we have seems positively pacific. Okay, maybe more Atlantic (which is infinitely better than being in the doldrums), and not without glitch and worry, but somehow cleaner.

Yes, we're the Power Couple. I've always known that. But power needs mass and energy, or some sort of Newtonian principle I'm way to far from Std. 7 science to remember. It requires, in our case, two bodies with drive to work, work on things, understand things, to really care about the whole thing, to have the deep need to keep the machine chuffing along.

It is perhaps no coincidence that I ponder all this in the sticky wake of Valentine's Day, and I'm certainly not suggesting these other people don't have certain energies and needs and ambitions. I'm not saying people aren't necessarily vigilant enough, or get lazy. We're all seeking happiness, and if we take our foot off the pedal or take each other for granted it's only because the energy isn't inexhaustible.

But what it needs is one of those glowing energy cells you see in science-fiction movies. When the machine around it has pushed its way across the universe and looks hulking and old, when all the humans controlling the ship from the bridge have long since perished in hyperspace, when the craft is discovered by generations hence, humanoid but not human, all they find to suggest the ship had some sort of mission, some sort of reason for existing, is this glowing cell, kept alive by the most precious thing known to man: an inexhaustible source of energy.

Even now, as we're apart, and I feel tired by missing you, I know the energy cell glows. It doesn't flicker or buzz, it simply glows. Without it, a relationship must be sustained through continuity, the appearance of trust, excitement, variation and the luxury of having options. These are all important, but shouldn't be the ne plus ultra or even the sine qua non or even the quid quo pro.

I cherish every day that I feel our energy cells glowing through the darkness of the universe of relationship trouble above our heads.