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.