When I first got into this car, I wasn’t too excited about traveling for 7 hours. This wasn’t helped by the fact that my parents couldn’t agree about who’s fault it was that we hadn’t left on time. So that made the first 2 hours awful, with everyone pouty and not too happy. Thankfully, we then had dinner, and put on some music. I swear, music can cure anything. I want to be a doctor and just write out prescriptions for music and laughter. They certainly seem to help. Either way, Stuart McClean has helped make the mood a lot lighter in this van, quickly speeding West to Shuswap lake.
I promised a second installation on those 3 powerful words.
My second one is the exact opposite of hate, and it might just be stronger. That word is love. Now, I know I’ve mentioned love many, many times on this blog. That’s one proof of just how powerful it is to me.
Here are my reasons. First, there are millions of stories, plays, songs, movies, notes, letters, sonnets, and blogs about love. When you think about it, there aren’t a ton of stories, plays, songs, movies, notes, letters, sonnets, and blogs about hate. If you have ever felt the feeling of love in your heart, (or your brain, if you want to be scientific about it…) you would understand how so many writers can spend their entire lives rhyming and composing about the word.
L, is for the way you look at me
O, is for the only one I see
V, is very very extraordinary
E, is even more than anyone could more adore…
Love is a powerful thing by any definition. I don’t have a dictionary with me, but love is not something easily defined anyways. There is only one man who defined it for me, and I believe him to be the best philosopher of his time. His name is Hobbes – not the French Philosopher, but the cartoon character.
Though it may not be a completely ‘medical’ definition, it does allude to the complexity and variation of feelings we feel when we ‘fall in love’.
As a side note, we have the phrase of “fall in love”. What does that mean? I once read about how cancer is seen as a much more harmful disease than it actually is (and that’s not to say it isn’t hard, I understand the difficulties) because people use war analogies to describe it – “Battle cancer” or “Fight cancer” come to mind. So if it’s possible for just the context of a word to alter one’s feelings towards it, can the same be said for love? What if you were said to ‘fly to love’ or ‘drift in love’? They sound awkward to say, but ‘falling in love’ doesn’t make much sense either.
When you’re in love, things seem to take on a whole new shape and form. Imagine that you are suddenly forced to look at everything with glasses that distorted the world in the manner of the bottom of a wine bottle. Everything is out of proportion to what we see normally. (That brings to light the thought that if we were raised looking at life through such distortion, would it become as natural as sight is to us?). We would feel as if every part of our life is thrown out of balance. I often find it amusing to talk to young elementary students (particularly the male variety) on the topic of love, because they view it as disgusting and strange. Perhaps that stems from the unease felt with such a topic. Indeed, at such a young age, not much is known about love and how one is to feel about love at that age. Being a great lover of the Calvin and Hobbes comics, I enjoy the progression of understanding I uncover from the words of those young philosophers. (Another story would have to be that I learned what a psychiatrist was because of C&H).
What I’m getting at here is, love is something that doesn’t make much sense to those who haven’t felt it. If you have never shared love with another person, I will attest that it is a wonderful feeling that everyone should feel.
The upsetting part about love today though is the fact that more people are unable to stay together nowadays. Divorce rates (though I don’t have access to actual numbers) have skyrocketed in the past decades. It seems that people just don’t love the same way any more. There’s the simple love, and that’s the just-graduated-love-of-my-life love, and the let’s-have-sex love, and the I-love-you-for-a-limited-time love. And then there's the intense-never-ending love. In the past, those couples would stick together for their entire lives, through thick and thin, dying in each others arms. Now if people stay together for 15 years, they’ll have surpassed the national average! It’s crazy talk.
Either way, love drives our world, if not less than it did in the past. That’s why I think it deserves to be one of the 3 most powerful words in English.
There’s a calm surrender,
To the rush of day,
When the heat of the rolling world,
Can be turned away…
An enchanted moment,
And it sees me through,
It’s enough to make Kings and Vagabonds,
Believe the very best…
And can you feel, the love tonight,
How it’s laid to rest,
It’s enough for this wide-eyed wanderer
That we got this far…
Ok, I don’t want to write up another explanation on another word, so I’ll let you stay in suspense for one more day. Hopefully it’ll be interesting enough for you.
One other thing I’m thinking about right now is switching to another format of hosting. The only reason for that is for you, and your comments. What I’m thinking is having something like Blogger become my new host for this blog, and that would allow you to comment on what you read here. The only thing about that is that I enjoy the HTML abilities of Google Page Creator. If you just read my blog though, you don’t need to care.
Anyways, I’ve had enough of typing, and it’s getting pretty dark out, so I’m going to call it quits. Thanks for reading, and please send me an e-mail or make contact of some sort, and we can discuss any topic you want. I like talking.
Peace & Blessing,
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