The Abyss

All the build up to the launch served as more of a distraction than a focus on Real Love. Burying myself in emails, designs, re-writes and spidergrams drew my attention to the, albeit necessary, logistics of any project but, in the melee, I almost forgot why I thought it necessary to embark on this audacious mission in the first place.

I have so many people pulling on my heart strings for different purposes and with wide-ranging agendas at present. This is a large part of why this project is necessary to me because I need to find out who here are passengers, who are frauds and who are here for me. Isn’t the famous adage ‘Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all?’ Is it therefore not most important to serve my own interests before those around me? Or have I learned to look after everyone else first and serve myself last?

Conflicting ideologies in my understanding of love and personal relationships now reflect in my indecision at the first major crossroad now this project is under way. Which way do we go? I know what I want to see, I know what I’ve heard is good but I also know that the beauty of Real Love is that no two journeys are the same.  Everyone else on the team will probably have a similar monologue running through their minds and have their own ideas as to the objective of a Real Love adventure.

What goes on in all of our personal lives will have a major bearing on how we perceive love and, considering our largely singleton female team, there is even more of a skew on the universal love-o-meter. Women are far more inclined to see love (and all that comes with it) through rosier Ray-Bans than a man. In fact, women are much more inclined to see love full stop.

I have already been faced with a lot of male scepticism about this project because, like I mentioned in the premise of Real Love, many see it as something that does not exist – merely a platitude to keep people happy. Upon broaching the subject, most of the men I asked immediately wondered if there was a financial loophole they were missing. Why would doing something like this be of any relevance to my hunting and gathering? Am I OK? Has something happened to me?

Before we can even start properly, there has to be a moment of clarity.

The next 48 hours will be critical on the path of Real Love.