328. Unjustified Love

He doesn’t know why she always asks him to tell her why he loves her. Maybe it’s because she has doubts about the strength of his love or its durability. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t understand why he loves her out of all the people in the world. Maybe it’s because she likes to hear him give her reasons so that she can feel more worthy and deserving of his love.

But regardless, the question bothers him. It bothers him even though he isn’t lacking in reasons. He loves her because she is thoughtful, attentive, and caring. He loves her because her wit is sharp and her intelligence piercing. He loves her because she is so bursting with beauty that he often cannot pull his eyes away. He loves her because she makes him laugh more than any comedian ever could. He loves her because just seeing her smile transforms a miserable day into a happy one. He loves her because every second spent with her fills his heart with an indescribable joy. All of these reasons and more are true. But even all of them put together is not enough to justify his love.

His love is bigger, vaster, and always more than any possible set of reasons. He doesn’t think he could ever explain it fully. He loves her because she is she, the exact and only person that she could be, a unique individual who cannot be replicated or replaced. Everything she is to him could never be reduced to mere reasons. It could never be captured by words, not in this language or in any language. There is always more to his love, always something beyond what he could say.

So the question of “why” bothers him. He wishes he could answer it but he knows he never will. It is an unanswerable question. His only consolation is that its very unanswerability demonstrates the power of his love for her. For if his love can escape any possible description, it must not be of this world. It must be something transcendent and possibly even eternal.

Of course he has told her all of this before, many times and in excruciating detail. Whenever he does, she only smiles at him and says nothing. In the end, perhaps it is the performance of the ritual that she enjoys more than any of his answers.