ἀγάπη

These right here are my people. I realised standing in a room of friends today, that this right here is the dream. I am living the dream. The dream of love. The dream of agape. Agape is what the ancient greeks called “love between friends”. At school, I had tastes of agape: in the hidden greek classroom under the classics corridors stairs, chanting irregular verb declinations with two of my dearest friends, one tall, one short; one brunette, one blonde; two tough, two soft. Us three.

The Seine watched all winter, as the agape around me grew larger and larger until the three of us, drinking wine and eating crêpes by the Seine became a ball of energy in the dark night, unstoppable, unchangeable, forever. We were happy, we were whole, we were one and agape was flying in the air as we swung on the monkey bars. ‘La vie en rose’ blasted from the big blue speaker, and we toured the streets of Paris, the cold air turning our faces blue, but we didn’t care. Agape was warm in our hearts.

And so that brings me to tonight. A night where I experienced agape in its purest form. The Italianos. It was as if we were on the set of a movie. We laughed until our stomachs hurt and we smiled until our eyes couldn’t crinkle no more. Every touch of a shoulder and caress of a cheek was a message saying, ‘I love you’. Every sparkle in an eye, holding onto mine told me, ‘I see you’. Every wide show of teeth grinned, ‘We’re living for the now’. Every crunch of pizza, sip of wine, bite of Sicilian biscuits was us yelling, ‘Tomorrow doesn’t exist!’. In that little appartment outisde Bois de Vincennes, we were a hidden beacon of light. The walls kept us safe from the rain and wind hurling outside. Our laughter bounced around the room again and again, faster and faster, resonating until the whirlwind of love caught up with us all and we took off, flying. We danced with each other, swinging in and out of the stars, sprinting up staircases of galaxies and tumbling back down to Earth on meteors. The six Italians, and me.

I don’t know how I became this lucky to share this moment, to be a part of this moment with them. I’m not one of them, but somehow I am. I don’t share their background or culture or country but somehow that doesn’t matter. The quick clacking of Italian bouncing off their tounges draws me in, into a culture of warmth and genoristy and acceptance. No matter where you come from, they accept you. They are beyond conception.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I wasn’t as worthy of agape like everyone else, like normal people. I told myself that I was too different from others, too complicated too broken. But each of these moments of agape tells me the opposite. They tell me that I deserve happiness, that I am worthy of agape, and slowly, gradually, I’m starting to believe it.