I love love love Stevie Wonder. There have been times in my life when all I would listen to is Stevie. He is amazing and he has so much to say about love.
One particular song that I am fond of is "As." There's a line in that song that always gives me pause:
Did you know that true love asks for nothing?
Wait, nothing? Nothing at all? I can't really wrap my brain around the concept that love, true love asks for nothing. So nothing in return, no favours. It's just...love, love for the sake of love.
I gotta say I'm not sure if I buy that. But that could be because I don't think I know what true love is, nor do I think that I've experienced it. I know I've experienced love, some form of love. But true love? I'm not even sure if there is a difference between true love and just plain old love.
But maybe I'm missing this completely. Maybe I shouldn't take this line so seriously. Obviously if it asked: did you know that true love asks for a little? That is not nearly as powerful as asking for nothing. Maybe true love only asks for a little, like all I really want is your time, your presence, you to listen and share your life with me. That doesn't seem like much, right? And yet if true love doesn't asks for much or even nothing at all, why is it that so many people get it wrong? (myself included)
I don't think I can even point to a real life (as opposed to fake life) couple who I look at and say: wow, I want to be like them some day. Honestly, there isn't. I can look on TV and find it easily, but alas, TV does not reflect reality. I have mentioned before that I'm a fan of Scrubs. My favourite couple on that show is Carla and Turk. They go through their share of tough times (at least as much as they can and still be a TV couple) and they make it. I love that. Yet it never seems that simple.
Life is hard and love seems even harder. But that doesn't stop me from trying. My experiences with love have been good and bad but I'm still hoping I'll find "that very special someone to share all [my] dreams with" (courtesy of Indie Arie "Can you be a part of my life?) That person might be hard to find but I think he's worth it and he'll think I'm worth it too :)
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Doctor Love
Dr. Love sounds like a cliché term for some really cheesy guy who tries too hard. But after dating my best friend for nearly a year and a half, I’ve found that Love really is a physician and a psychiatrist. India.Arie says it so well in “Therapy” and “He Heals Me.”
What is love? I honestly can’t think of any description better than India’s. In “Therapy,” she describes a man who cares for the woman he loves:
On most days, my boyfriend would rather listen to Gang Starr than India.Arie, but I love this song because for me, these lyrics are talking about him. I have a habit of stressing out and letting small things overwhelm me. One Saturday night, I was feeling stressed after spending the entire day working on assignments and studying for an exam. I had gotten to the point where I was frustrated and depressed and tired, but I felt like I had too much work to take a break even though I desperately needed one. I was typing a paper at my boyfriend’s desk while he sat on his bed reading, and he called my name. When I turned around, he laid down his book and held out his arms for me. I went over to him, and he took me in his arms. In that moment, I felt more love for him than I had ever experienced before; it was beautiful. Without saying a word, he just held me, and it seemed like his arms were squeezing the stress out of me and replacing it with an amazing peace. He held me silently for a few minutes before I had to get back to work, but I felt completely revitalized when he let go of me. That is love.He lays me on the couch and says how has your day been?Tell me your problems; I'll help you solve them.Come on, let's talk about it. He sits next to me and smiles.Listens to all of my words, relaxes all of my nerves.
When I feel like I'm losing power...The way you touch me says I'm there for you.It heals me just to hear you say, "I love you."
He's done this so many times, and I don't think he even knows how much he has helped me. This is how a man should love: he shouldn't be a source of drama like so many women experience. A real man who really loves should be a force that brings calm to a stormy day.
...."He Heals Me” is a similar song. Its words resonate within me in the same way.
I told him my biggest secret. And he told me four.This man knows my faults better than anyone else in the world, even my best friends. And yet he still wants to be with me; he still loves me. It fascinates me. I think the greatest thing I have learned about love is that it is unconditional. Both of us are so young, and I don’t know what’s in store for us in the future. I do know that regardless of where we end up, I will always love him because he has taught me so much about what a man should be, and what love should be.
He smiled at me and said, 'That makes me love you more.'
And even when I'm wrong, he is still kind.
He chooses his words wisely when he tells me I'm not right.
And yes, he is a beautiful man.But he is also a beautiful friend.
...He has so much compassion in his eyes.
I have no idea how long he'll be here: a season or a lifetime, forever or a year.But for the first time in my life I'm not worried about the futureBecause we have such a wonderful time when we're together.However things turn out, it's all right cause he's already changed my life.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
These Love Songs That Don't Love Me
“And I'm so sick of love songs
so tired of tears
so done with wishing you were still here.
Said I’m so sick of love songs
so sad and slow
…… So why can’t I turn off the radio?”
-Ne-Yo
How about these love songs? In “So Sick” Ne-Yo is suffering from the spoils of love. He is suffering hard too. “Don’t make me think about her smile or having her first child.” His heart is evidently still with his ex. I can’t speculate on the nature of their relationship, or what caused her to stop loving him, but I have come to the conclusion that that is not important. Regardless of if the love was perfect or misguided, Ne-Yo still feels the shitty spoils of love. It’s really fucked up when you think about it. She is gone. Moseying on with her happy life, moving forward on the next best to train, and he is stuck. Stuck in this cloudy, hellish nightmare. Can’t move backward because she’s gone. Can’t move forward because he can’t stop thinking about all of it over and over again. It sucks. The worst part is that he simply cannot afford to spend one more day stuck in the limbo warp zone because it is slowly eating away at his ability to be happy, his ability to focus, his peace of mind, and perhaps even his sanity. I’m sure Ne-Yo did not know it, but he may as well have been sitting on a time bomb. Every additional day in this state grinds a person down. Further and further down. Everyday closer and closer to the bottom of the pit.
So at this point people who have never been there start making suggestions. I bet this is what happened to Ne-Yo. One of his boys told him, “Dude turn off the fuckn radio, quit listening to these sad ass love songs and pick yourself up.” And Ne-Yo was like I am tired of being stuck. I want to stop thinking about her but I can’t. Even if I turned off the radio in my room, a constant song is playing in my head day and night. “Why can’t I stop turn off the radio?” So, why? Why can’t he turn off the radio?
Reader, at this point I can take this post so many different directions, but since this blog is about love and not about mental health awareness I chose this direction. Jasmine Sullivan asks the question best. Why do we love love when love seems to hate us? After experiencing heartbreak and unreturned devotion and commitment, most of the population does not totally cast interest in pursuing another love relationship aside for all eternity. If people did that after every heartbreak I think humans would be pretty much extinct by now. But that doesn’t happen. Perhaps it’s all biological and people’s instinct to reproduce compels us not to give up on love. Maybe it’s spiritual. After the fall of man and all women were cursed to various degrees, God said be fruitful and multiply. Being fruitful involves so much more than having sex and popping babies. Being fruitful involves bearing the fruits of love. So what can the ladies of FAB Dub conclude about love from this perspective on “So Sick”? Don’t give up on love because of heartbreak. Ne-Yo still has not given up. It’s just not natural to quit loving. Keep the love for love alive. Don’t let your previous experience with love minimize the horizon of possibilities in your future for a love that is deeper, stronger, and possibly knock your socks off. As my favorite author said in Their Eyes Were Watching God “Love is a moving thing and it’s different on every shore.” Like Ne-Yo, don’t turn off the radio. Instead, dedicate each love song that plays to the love of love.
so tired of tears
so done with wishing you were still here.
Said I’m so sick of love songs
so sad and slow
…… So why can’t I turn off the radio?”
-Ne-Yo
How about these love songs? In “So Sick” Ne-Yo is suffering from the spoils of love. He is suffering hard too. “Don’t make me think about her smile or having her first child.” His heart is evidently still with his ex. I can’t speculate on the nature of their relationship, or what caused her to stop loving him, but I have come to the conclusion that that is not important. Regardless of if the love was perfect or misguided, Ne-Yo still feels the shitty spoils of love. It’s really fucked up when you think about it. She is gone. Moseying on with her happy life, moving forward on the next best to train, and he is stuck. Stuck in this cloudy, hellish nightmare. Can’t move backward because she’s gone. Can’t move forward because he can’t stop thinking about all of it over and over again. It sucks. The worst part is that he simply cannot afford to spend one more day stuck in the limbo warp zone because it is slowly eating away at his ability to be happy, his ability to focus, his peace of mind, and perhaps even his sanity. I’m sure Ne-Yo did not know it, but he may as well have been sitting on a time bomb. Every additional day in this state grinds a person down. Further and further down. Everyday closer and closer to the bottom of the pit.
So at this point people who have never been there start making suggestions. I bet this is what happened to Ne-Yo. One of his boys told him, “Dude turn off the fuckn radio, quit listening to these sad ass love songs and pick yourself up.” And Ne-Yo was like I am tired of being stuck. I want to stop thinking about her but I can’t. Even if I turned off the radio in my room, a constant song is playing in my head day and night. “Why can’t I stop turn off the radio?” So, why? Why can’t he turn off the radio?
Reader, at this point I can take this post so many different directions, but since this blog is about love and not about mental health awareness I chose this direction. Jasmine Sullivan asks the question best. Why do we love love when love seems to hate us? After experiencing heartbreak and unreturned devotion and commitment, most of the population does not totally cast interest in pursuing another love relationship aside for all eternity. If people did that after every heartbreak I think humans would be pretty much extinct by now. But that doesn’t happen. Perhaps it’s all biological and people’s instinct to reproduce compels us not to give up on love. Maybe it’s spiritual. After the fall of man and all women were cursed to various degrees, God said be fruitful and multiply. Being fruitful involves so much more than having sex and popping babies. Being fruitful involves bearing the fruits of love. So what can the ladies of FAB Dub conclude about love from this perspective on “So Sick”? Don’t give up on love because of heartbreak. Ne-Yo still has not given up. It’s just not natural to quit loving. Keep the love for love alive. Don’t let your previous experience with love minimize the horizon of possibilities in your future for a love that is deeper, stronger, and possibly knock your socks off. As my favorite author said in Their Eyes Were Watching God “Love is a moving thing and it’s different on every shore.” Like Ne-Yo, don’t turn off the radio. Instead, dedicate each love song that plays to the love of love.
Ne-Yo's Make It Work
I've been told I'm a pessimistic and I guess that's true because I cannot help but look at this song and see the negative. Ne-Yo talks about making it work specifically "we gotta make it work." I cannot help but focus on one word: we. We gotta make it work. It takes two to make a relationship work. It is impossible to do it alone. One of the worse feeling in the world is to feel like you're the only trying to make it work and that your partner isn't. But this is also where it gets confusing because what if your partner is trying but not in the way you want? Then it seems like you are fighting alone even if you aren't. That's such a tough situation to be in (been there, done that).
Ne-Yo also talks about the reality of relationships that isn't pretty. There seems to be no happily-ever after. There will be moments where I am completely in love and there will be moments where I absolutely hate him. That's reality. There's a quote from Scrubs (best show ever) where Carla says that "Every relationship is messed up. What makes it perfect is if you still want to be there when things really suck." I think that is so true. Love takes time and once you're in love, you should do everything in your power to keep it. If you can go through the bad times and still want to be there then your relationship is good. I personally wouldn't say perfect (I am a pessimist after all) but regardless that's a good relationship.
A good relationship takes time and patience. The beginning is always wonderful or at least, that's been my experience. You're finding out about the person, learning all his ins and outs and for me, as a person who loves learning, I love that part. I love understanding what makes someone happy, his hopes, his dreams (then of course, I can find out if I can see myself in those hopes and dreams). I understand relationships take time. It's the patience thing, I struggle with. I'm impatient. I know I have come a very long way in that regard but it's still something I need to work on. There's also an important distinction that I have yet to get. How much patience is enough and how much is too much? Because you can always over do things, you can be too patient and that can be a waste of time, but without patience, you could be rushing into something you have no business doing. I'm aware there needs to be a balance. I'm just not sure what it is. But I am all about figuring it out so I guess that's just something I will hopefully figure out with time.
Ne-Yo also talks about the reality of relationships that isn't pretty. There seems to be no happily-ever after. There will be moments where I am completely in love and there will be moments where I absolutely hate him. That's reality. There's a quote from Scrubs (best show ever) where Carla says that "Every relationship is messed up. What makes it perfect is if you still want to be there when things really suck." I think that is so true. Love takes time and once you're in love, you should do everything in your power to keep it. If you can go through the bad times and still want to be there then your relationship is good. I personally wouldn't say perfect (I am a pessimist after all) but regardless that's a good relationship.
A good relationship takes time and patience. The beginning is always wonderful or at least, that's been my experience. You're finding out about the person, learning all his ins and outs and for me, as a person who loves learning, I love that part. I love understanding what makes someone happy, his hopes, his dreams (then of course, I can find out if I can see myself in those hopes and dreams). I understand relationships take time. It's the patience thing, I struggle with. I'm impatient. I know I have come a very long way in that regard but it's still something I need to work on. There's also an important distinction that I have yet to get. How much patience is enough and how much is too much? Because you can always over do things, you can be too patient and that can be a waste of time, but without patience, you could be rushing into something you have no business doing. I'm aware there needs to be a balance. I'm just not sure what it is. But I am all about figuring it out so I guess that's just something I will hopefully figure out with time.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
John Legend’s Ordinary People
Love isn’t always pretty; sometimes it sucks. And yet we choose to do it anyway because of the hope that it’s worth it in the end.
I’m new to this whole romantic love game, and it confuses the heck out of me. It’s a little funny how everyone thinks they have it figured out in that first stage: the “infatuation phase,” the honeymoon. But we haven’t even touched the true essence of it until we’ve been with someone long enough to be sick of them. Maybe it’s cynical or mean, but I think it’s true. The people I love most – my parents, my siblings, my best friends – they all frustrate me and make me want to scream sometimes, and yet I know that I love them because I never want to be without them despite the aggravation.
John Legend gets it wrong a lot of the time. The music is nice, but the lyrics are bull. (i.e. “She Don’t Have To Know” and the like)… But I think he got this song right. There is beauty in realizing that the person you love is an ordinary person, that you yourself are just an ordinary person. We expect and we accept imperfections from our parents, our siblings, and our friends, yet we resent the imperfections of our mates… I could say a lot about it; it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective I guess. But if we want love to work, we have to learn how to forgive our lovers when they hurt us and how to change when we are the ones doing the harm.
The main conclusion: we should take it slow. It seems so simple, but it just may be the hardest thing to do. Stepping out of the whirlwind of love, and taking the time to truly learn about each other and grow with each other. Those words mean so much to me because I have seen so many girls falling in love too quickly. I let myself do it for the first time in my life. And I think the falling is the trusting – trusting that this person we think we know so well will never hurt us. But we’re all just ordinary people. No one can be everything that you or I need and want. So maybe we should stop falling, or at least stop falling like a tree being chopped down, and instead we should drift like a leaf in the wind. Love is so much better when we take it slow.
I’m new to this whole romantic love game, and it confuses the heck out of me. It’s a little funny how everyone thinks they have it figured out in that first stage: the “infatuation phase,” the honeymoon. But we haven’t even touched the true essence of it until we’ve been with someone long enough to be sick of them. Maybe it’s cynical or mean, but I think it’s true. The people I love most – my parents, my siblings, my best friends – they all frustrate me and make me want to scream sometimes, and yet I know that I love them because I never want to be without them despite the aggravation.
John Legend gets it wrong a lot of the time. The music is nice, but the lyrics are bull. (i.e. “She Don’t Have To Know” and the like)… But I think he got this song right. There is beauty in realizing that the person you love is an ordinary person, that you yourself are just an ordinary person. We expect and we accept imperfections from our parents, our siblings, and our friends, yet we resent the imperfections of our mates… I could say a lot about it; it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective I guess. But if we want love to work, we have to learn how to forgive our lovers when they hurt us and how to change when we are the ones doing the harm.
The main conclusion: we should take it slow. It seems so simple, but it just may be the hardest thing to do. Stepping out of the whirlwind of love, and taking the time to truly learn about each other and grow with each other. Those words mean so much to me because I have seen so many girls falling in love too quickly. I let myself do it for the first time in my life. And I think the falling is the trusting – trusting that this person we think we know so well will never hurt us. But we’re all just ordinary people. No one can be everything that you or I need and want. So maybe we should stop falling, or at least stop falling like a tree being chopped down, and instead we should drift like a leaf in the wind. Love is so much better when we take it slow.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Alicia Keys' Fallin
This song doesn't delve too deeply into the idea of love, but it's a popular song so I thought it would be a good place to start.
I don't know about you but I can relate to the idea of falling in and out of love with someone. It's painful. Love is such a beautiful thing, but when the love is gone, the pain is incredible. Words can't even describe adequately the pain of love. In the past, when I've written on love, it is mostly on the pain of losing love. The pain is great and the feeling is so strong, stronger in fact that being in love. But that's just me. I don't know if y'all can relate to that.
So love involves pain. But how much pain is too much? In looking back, I feel like there are many times (too many times) where I went through a whole lot of pain when I should have just walked away. Even just writing about this is hard. I find myself thinking back on those times and wondering where it all went wrong.
I want to know what love is but my past leaves me confused almost shrouded in darkness. Despite the beauty of the past, I find the past lingering in the most unforgiving way. Holding on and refusing to let go.
But I still have hope. I have to because life without love to me is not a life worth living. The people I love are the people that make this life worth living. They keep me holding on. Suffice to say, I am who I am through others and I am grateful for the ones I hold dear in my life.
Wow, I'm sure this post will probably make no sense but it is the first so cut me some slack. I'll get the hang of this eventually. Love, love, love and then love some more. :)
I don't know about you but I can relate to the idea of falling in and out of love with someone. It's painful. Love is such a beautiful thing, but when the love is gone, the pain is incredible. Words can't even describe adequately the pain of love. In the past, when I've written on love, it is mostly on the pain of losing love. The pain is great and the feeling is so strong, stronger in fact that being in love. But that's just me. I don't know if y'all can relate to that.
So love involves pain. But how much pain is too much? In looking back, I feel like there are many times (too many times) where I went through a whole lot of pain when I should have just walked away. Even just writing about this is hard. I find myself thinking back on those times and wondering where it all went wrong.
I want to know what love is but my past leaves me confused almost shrouded in darkness. Despite the beauty of the past, I find the past lingering in the most unforgiving way. Holding on and refusing to let go.
But I still have hope. I have to because life without love to me is not a life worth living. The people I love are the people that make this life worth living. They keep me holding on. Suffice to say, I am who I am through others and I am grateful for the ones I hold dear in my life.
Wow, I'm sure this post will probably make no sense but it is the first so cut me some slack. I'll get the hang of this eventually. Love, love, love and then love some more. :)
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