You say we all want to be adored.
But that doesn't sound right to me. I say what we all really want is to be liked.
I mean "liked" in that earthbound, old-comfortable-shoe sort of way: someone meets your eye and smiles with you while you're both watching some old movie. Someone shares a whole, real laugh with you, at your wry throwaway line. Or notices that you prefer the small fork, and it matters to him or her that you have it.
Liking, it seems to me, is the meat-and-potatoes, the day-to-day-ness, of love.
Adoration, on the other hand, is way too much of a pinnacle: spindly, fragile. A hollow bone of a thing. You can teeter on its brink. You can fall, man. No substance, no net to save your precious, tissue-paper soul. To be merely adored is to be on the cusp of being loathsome.
Give me your friendship: I have all I need.
But give me only your awe, your untarnished ardor? My vessel cannot sink, but neither can it float.
