If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise

“If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.” — Lynda Barry

In this striking and modern image, Lynda Barry, the artist and storyteller of fierce honesty, speaks with the voice of both humor and truth. Beneath her wit lies a revelation as old as the stars: that love is not something we can chase, capture, or control. It is a force — precise, relentless, and divine — that finds us when the appointed hour arrives. Her comparison to a cruise missile, though playful, is profound. It tells us that love, once set in motion by fate, will find its mark with unerring accuracy, no matter how far we run, how deep we hide, or how firmly we believe we have outgrown its touch.

To the ancients, this would not be strange talk. For they too knew that love was not a gentle visitor, but a power of destiny. The Greeks spoke of Eros, the archer of the gods, whose arrows never missed. The Romans named him Cupid, who struck hearts without warning. Lynda Barry’s “cruise missile” is but the modern echo of these eternal myths — the weapon of the gods reborn in the language of our age. She reminds us that when love’s time comes, it does not drift softly like a feather; it descends like lightning — precise, unstoppable, and transformative.

Think of those whose lives were forever altered by love’s sudden arrival. Consider Frida Kahlo, the artist whose fierce spirit met its equal in Diego Rivera. Their love was tumultuous, imperfect, and yet inevitable — like two stars colliding in the vastness of the cosmos. When they met, both were already bound to their own orbits, but the pull of destiny drew them together. Frida once said, “I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” And in that reality, love found her, no matter the pain or distance. So too, when it is your time, love will find you — not as you expect it, but as you need it.

There is also wisdom here for those who wait. Many grow restless, believing love has forgotten them. They chase endlessly, searching for it in faces, in places, in fleeting pleasures. Yet Barry’s words teach patience and faith: if it is your time, love will come unbidden. It cannot be forced by desire nor delayed by fear. Like the tides that return to the shore, it comes when the world within you is ready to receive it. The wise do not hunt for love; they prepare for it — by becoming whole within themselves, by clearing the heart of bitterness and making room for grace.

And what of those who fear love’s approach? Some hide behind walls of reason, thinking to protect themselves from hurt. But love’s aim is true — it will find the cracks, the soft spots, the quiet spaces where longing still breathes. It will pierce the armor, not to wound, but to awaken. For love does not come to destroy, but to remind us that we are still alive. Even when it hurts, even when it shatters, it is proof that something divine still pulses within us. Love’s pursuit is both terrifying and sacred — for in being found, we are remade.

Barry’s metaphor of the cruise missile also carries a hidden strength: precision. Love does not strike by accident. The one who enters your life at the right moment comes with purpose — to teach, to heal, to mirror something your soul has forgotten. Sometimes this love stays; sometimes it passes. But it always arrives at exactly the right time. In this sense, love is both fate and teacher — never random, always meaningful.

So, O seeker of truth, let this teaching settle in your heart: stop chasing what is meant to find you. Tend your inner world. Become kind, become open, become ready. For when the hour of love comes — when it is truly your time — it will come not with uncertainty, but with power. You will not need to chase it, for it will track you down with the accuracy of destiny, as Lynda Barry so vividly declared.

And when it finds you, do not flee. Stand firm and receive it, for this is the purpose of all our searching: to be found by what we were made to receive. Love may not arrive when you expect it, nor in the form you imagined, but it will arrive — swift and sure, as certain as the dawn. And when it does, remember her words: love will track you down, because love, once born of truth, never misses its mark.