Everyone values their feelings. And, often, that value grows precisely when we suffer the trauma of things we chose because of an image that seemed attractive to us, like an investment, a reference we never truly verified.
We store feelings the way we store money in a bank, waiting for time to pay interest.
Except feelings can lose value too.
They are paper money that passes through Cruzado, Cruzeiro, URV, Real, the dollar, Bitcoin. The name changes, the exchange rate changes, the world changes. Something that seemed to have absolute value yesterday may not even buy what it used to tomorrow.
Love can resemble an investment when we know, at least, how to separate what is obvious from what is a dream.
The obvious can also carry fantasies. Dreams may not be achievable — and they don't have to be. The problem begins when we confuse one person's dream with another person's obligation to make it come true.
For a relationship to work, both people have to participate. Somehow, both need to be on the same wavelength. They don't have to think alike, want the same things, or agree all the time. But they do need to treat each other like adults.
Without one person's participation, the other cannot sustain alone what should be built by both.
We keep what we consider valuable inside ourselves: in our flesh and in our feelings. Both decay.
Feelings lose value over time. And there is an irony in that: feelings remain emotional assets to us, but they can completely lose their value to the other person.
We also lose value little by little.
We lose beauty. We lose muscle. Collagen slowly disappears. Skin changes. The body changes. Time defeats everyone.
And eventually, that feeling no longer earns the interest we imagined it would.
What remains is bitterness.
But life owes no one anything. Least of all other people.
A lesson does not last forever.
Clarity does.
I see city walls covered with “MORE LOVE, PLEASE!”, like a protest from people who want love, want to receive love, want to negotiate love.
It's almost like those floating signs:
GOLD FOR SALE AND PURCHASE!
Except love isn't something you ask for.
Love is given.
We can buy companionship, attention, sex, comfort, security, or anything else we mistake for love. But when the installment comes due, whatever was purchased can also come to an end.
Love is a byproduct of passion.
Maybe it's like the radioactive waste produced by a nuclear power plant: passion produces an enormous amount of energy, but afterward we have to deal with what remains. We can store it, we can take care of it, or we can contaminate other people with what we were unable to resolve.
No one is obligated to have empathy.
Much less is anyone obligated to breathe the love another person has decided to produce.
There is no age requirement for loving the way there is an age requirement for getting a driver's license.
But there is an age at which we can begin to understand what loving means.
Passion makes us ask whom to love.
Love shows us what remains after passion fades.
And the interest comes with time.
Many people put their feelings in a bank, hoping they will earn interest. Hoping the other person will love us the way we think we deserve. The way we believe we should be loved.
It's like keeping money under the mattress and discovering, years later, that those bills are no longer worth anything.
Or worse:
the house catches fire.
Love needs to circulate.
That doesn't mean spending everything.
Use common sense.
Don't be so radical that you turn the opposite of your belief into a new belief. You need to listen to proposals, observe the future market, and, above all, be able to see yourself within it.
Because there is no truth in the future.
There is reality.
Imagine it this way.
You're with that person.
You live together in a nice two-story house, furnished, with three bedrooms, in a nice neighborhood. The neighbors aren't exactly friendly, but everyone minds their own business.
You're stuck in traffic, heading home after a stressful day at work — or whatever it is you do to maintain everything you have together.
You arrive.
The person you love is in the bedroom, working.
The door is closed.
You don't know whether she's online, in a meeting, or simply concentrating.
Then you see a red sign glowing:
DO NOT ENTER!
You remember that you've argued about this several times.
She asked you for months to put up that sign.
Finally, you did.
Angrily.
But you did.
And you installed it properly.
Now you look at the sign and remember the arguments. But instead of feeling only anger, there is a small sense of satisfaction:
the argument is over.
The sign is there.
You solved something that was bothering the person you love.
You go to the kitchen.
There's nothing to eat.
You get angry.
Then you think:
“She’s busy too.”
She works.
You work.
You both work to maintain what you've built.
She isn't doing anything against you.
She's living her own life alongside yours.
So you make a carbonara.
Or you're too tired and order a good meal through iFood.
The food arrives.
You pick up the order.
And, a few minutes later, your phone lights up.
It's a message from her:
“It smells so good. Sorry I haven't done anything, I'm insanely busy... I love you.”
It's not the words “I love you” that make it matter.
It's not the house.
It's not the three bedrooms.
It's not the car.
It's not the money.
It's not the things you've achieved together.
It's the ability to notice the good things and the bad things.
It's doing the math at the Feelings Bank and realizing that, despite the arguments, the irritations, the bad days, the closed doors, the meal that wasn't made, and everything that went wrong, there is still a balance.
Not a perfect balance.
A sufficient balance.
Enough to continue.
Maybe that's what we call love.
Finding a place.
Finding a purpose.
Finding belonging in someone to whom we decide to dedicate a part of our existence.
Deep down, perhaps loving means closing our eyes in the darkness and, even without seeing what lies ahead, knowing that we are holding hands with someone we trust.
The setting may be horrible.
It may be imaginary.
It may be unknown.
It may be exactly what we fear most.
And still, there is one certainty:
the person is there.
That's what we imagine before we even get home.
That's what we hope to find when we open the door.
Not the promise that everything will be all right.
But the possibility that, even when it isn't, we won't be alone.
That's the interest.
That's the interest paid by Feelings Bank S/A.