The art of falling is not hard to master and in my experience, most of love is the falling. I can fall anywhere and I could love anything. In my lifetime I’ve fallen in love with every sky I’ve ever seen, millions of flowers, dirty sneakers, every phase of the moon, art, my family, thousands of songs, and countless women. Falling in love (quickly) is a nine step process: 

IF 

1. say what you mean and mean what you say 

If you want to love someone or something it’s very simple. Just repeat to yourself, “I love you” or “I love this” until you believe it. Falling is about lying. You lie with more than your tongue, you do so with your spirit. “I love you” on a liar’s tongue is akin to brainwashing. Whenever you’re with something you wish to love, just repeat “I love this” until you don’t have to say it anymore. It’s hard not to fall in love when you mean your lies.

2. eat a lot of avocados 

Love is best with a healthy heart and the quickest path to a healthy heart is a good diet. Avocados are packed with dietary fibers, nutrients, and monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids that keep your cholesterol low and your spirit happy. If you plan on falling in love, it's best to put avocados in your body as often as possible. Put it on your toast or your eggs or in your cereal or on your tacos or in your spaghetti or on your toothpaste or whatever the hell else you might eat. When falling, it’s best to have as healthy a heart as possible.  

3. kiss with your eyes open

If you kiss your lover with your eyes open, who’s to say they won’t fall in love with you? When you’re up that close and you can taste what they had for lunch and you just hope they can’t taste what you had for breakfast, that’s the best time to look them in the eyes. If someone can watch you kiss them and continue to be kissed, without reservation, you are in love. Delight is shameful and embarrassing. We close our eyes because it’s uncomfortable when we don’t. Falling in love is the practice of discomfort becoming ease. Practice kissing with your eyes open and you’ll become at ease, that much sooner. Who’s to say when their eyes would finally meet yours? 

PROBABLY 

 4. unstick yourself from time 

It’s probably best to not spend too much time on any one thing if you want to fall in love with everything. The best lovers aren’t in time at all. The best lover could love something from hundreds of years before their time or be completely infatuated with the world they left behind even a day after their death. When you love lots of things, time tends to run away from you in all directions. A novice lover’s time is spent in the present, appreciating the moment. An experienced lover had already loved that moment a hundred times over.  A timeless being probably trips and falls over people they haven’t even met yet. 

5. own a lot of mirrors 

You probably can’t fall in love with anything until you learn to fall in love with yourself. Spend time in the mirror, studying your face. Learn to love your lumpy head and chapped lips and ugly teeth and the weird thing on your face that you haven’t had the courage to tell anyone that you hate yet and how you look when you smile. In fact, you should probably practice your smile in the mirror. Falling people spend a lot of time smiling. 

6. always listen to music 

Life is better with a soundtrack. The first time I fell, I fell to “My Boo” by Usher and Alicia Keys. Listen to so much music that there is no song that isn't associated with a love of yours. Ruin the music. Make even the most joyous song a painful experience. A true lover and an even stauncher faller would have entire albums dedicated to love. I’ve lost all my favorite songs to women I could never keep. I probably could cry to a different song everyday for the rest of my life. Falling in love is nothing, if it’s not lost, somewhere. Eventually. You’ll gain it back everytime you rewind the song. 

MAYBE 

7. sleep a lot, dream often 

The best lovers are dreamers. Love is a delusion. It doesn’t have to last long. If you dream, the girl on the train with the long legs and the loud reggae music that hasn’t even looked in your direction once since you boarded the train 11 stops ago could be the love you’ve been waiting for. If you dream correctly, maybe she would love you back, the right way. You can love her and y’all five kids and 2 dogs and 3 cats just until she gets off the train. Then you train your eyes somewhere else and dream of falling in love with the 86-year old hispanic grandmother crowded into the corner of the train car with her shopping basket. And repeat. 

8. use your best eyes

Loving is also seeing the best in everyone. Maybe he stinks and he’s musty but the sweat makes his skin sparkle in the sunlight? Maybe it won’t stop raining but at least it’ll help you sleep? Maybe they don’t love you but at least you don’t have to carry the burden of being loved? A lover needs his best eyes, but a faller even moreso. You need to be careful of where you fall. If you fall in the wrong place, maybe you won’t get up again and you could risk being in love forever. 

9. jump 

Fall as often as possible. Maybe, you have nothing to lose. Maybe if you repeat “i love you” and eat a lot of avocados and kiss with your eyes open and practice your smile in the mirror, away from time, with your favorite song playing in a dream and you look down on the world with your best eyes and just jump and then maybe the world won’t kill you. Maybe you’ll hurl through the sky at 9.8 meters per second and maybe instead of hitting the ground, it would accept you and you’ll fall through the world waiting for the sky to meet you on the other side. Then you’ll fall from the sky and you’ll love that too.

🦋 

published May 6, 2022