"Simple Love" like yours?

This afternoon, as I was going out the door to exercise, the genome at Pandora sent the Alison Krauss song "Simple Love" via the cloud to my HTC -- and I took off like a bat out of hell.

Oh no, I thought. Not what I need to hear.

Two children born A beautiful wife Four walls and livin's all he needed in life Always giving, never asking back I wish I had a simple love like that I want a simple love like that Always giving, never askin' back For when I'm in my final hour lookin' back I hope I had a simple love like that

It's a lovely song, for sure. And if I don't think about whether it makes any sense, it's cool.

It hangs around my head.

But then I start to wonder. Who do you know who is "always giving, never askin' back"?

And you religious types aren't allowed to answer "Him."

I guess it's the concept of "simple love" that gets under my skin.

Love is complex -- even the love of a parent for a child.

Layers of history, of closeness, of distance, forgiveness, awe...love is an unsearchable mystery, a dark star which also glows bright as a campfire on a chilled night in wintertime.

Love can embrace ambivalence, coldness, even times of anger and perhaps jealousy (although I tend to think of jealousy as a sign of co-dependency).

Why then do we try to boil it down to -- well, simplicities?

And sentimental simplicities at that.

Over and over again, I see online profiles (and have met offline guys) who seem to want to recreate themselves in new relationships. I don't know this for sure, but I'd guess that the new ones look, in many ways, remarkably like the old ones.

But we bring the same old twisted selves with us to each new relationship. And we aren't simple.

To be in a "simple" relationship, we may have to simplify ourselves -- bury parts of ourselves that we either don't want the other person to see, or that we leave behind so that we can feel safe, and loved.

One has to ask, then -- what kind of love is this?

I've begun to realize that I'm looking for someone who isn't practiced at love.

He may be awkward about it. He may be as inexperienced as me, as gawky, as hesitant.

He doesn't fall easy, and he don't fall fast.

But he does know how -- because he's dug deeply with friends, with family, with his ideals and perhaps with his God.

Does such a guy exist? I dunno.

Take a listen to this song, by the talented but much less famous singer-songwriter Adrienne Young.

"I'll love you in the winter when the roots go deep...love is about winter as well as springtime -- and a love that doesn't embrace those opposites, doesn't see in them twin sides of the same whole, may not be a love that can go the distance.

I want...a complex love like that.