The True Story of Love

Once upon a time, Love was not existent.

The first people were living in their herds. In the night they were gathering around the big fire, sitting very close to each other. Close, to be powerful if needed, to fight their enemies and survive. Time went by and people understood their power. They realized that their weapons were stronger than the tigers and suddenly distance became available.

What will happen if I sit a little bit on the side? Hm. Not that bad? Maybe... I can try to go a few steps away from the others? Ha, that is funny.

Somebody had the idea to even walk to the hill and sit on the top. "I can still see the rest of the people, but I cannot hear them! How would that be?"

Another one decided to make it even better. He went to the hill and hid himself, so that neither he saw the herd nor they saw him.

There, in the dark and in the silence, that brave man was feeling fear again. Fear, but also excitement. "What if I stay, even if I am scared?" So he looked for an anchor and here it was... a sky full of stars. The man stared at the little lights, escaping the sound of his heartbeat.

After a while, he took a deep breath and the cold breeze cleansed his lungs and brought inside of his body the aroma of the wild herbs.

In that way, on that night, that brave man discovered Freedom.

Freedom was fresh and soon all the other men dared to taste it. One by one, they were leaving their herd and their women, to go and search the Freedom.

The women thought that Freedom was a diva, who lived at the end of the world, where the sea was. They started entwining the branches of the trees into green crowns and hanging them on the heads of their men to weave them into the earth so that they would not seek Freedom.

But the men were leaving. First, they were searching for Freedom behind the hill, but Freedom was staying only for a little while there. After, they searched behind the next hill, on the mountaintop, in the woods. Everywhere, step by step, until the men reached the sea, where the world was ending.

One by one, they were reaching the sea with the realization that Freedom was not there, and yet, she was calling them. The men mourned the shores and buried their fingers in the sands.

One day, one of them saw a tree trunk floating on the waves. Without a thought, in the burst of his excitement, he jumped in the water and climbed onto the trunk. He wanted to know how far he could go.

The others saw that. "Come back, you fool", they were screaming from the shore. But that man was already away, in the sea, fighting the waves, with his eyes worshiping the horizon. When his little body disappeared in the eternal blue, the men on the shore thought that maybe that was the way to Freedom. They went into the forest, cut the trees, and mounted the trunks to the horizon.

Meanwhile, the women couldn't follow their men. With all the little children and the food, with their animals and houses, they couldn't go after the Freedom. Day after day, the women got angry. More and more angry. One evening, staring at the fire and the empty spaces, without speaking to each other, they stood up and started screaming and hitting the ground with their helpless fists. They roared and howled at the moon, shedding their tears on the sand.

With their laments, the women told about their pain to the grasses. The grasses told to the roots. The roots reached the Underworld kingdoms of the Goddesses and spread the story of Anger.

For a long time, the Goddesses didn't care for the Women and that story of Anger was mostly amusing for them. But those women, o how hurt they were! Their tears, an unstoppable stream, were flooding the ground and in time, the salty rivers reached the kingdom of the Goddesses. The kingdom was flooding and the Goddesses got scared. They needed to do something...

"If the men keep searching for Freedom, they will no longer make babies with the women", said one of the Goddesses. "Soon people will disappear."

"Ah yes", exclaimed the other, "if people disappear, the beasts will go wild and take over the earth."

The Goddess of Death, without waiting for approval, uttered a spell.

"When the soul of a baby wants to come down to the earth, a woman and a man will recognize themselves in each other. The man will look at her and see the Freedom, finally available for his reach. The woman will see the ancient spirit of the herd. That herd that is always moving around together. That illusion will keep them connected for a while, for a new life to sprout."

This is how the Age of Freedom was over and another one came into being. They called it Love.

Thessaloniki, 2023