true story

More or less, it still is this year. However, for the sake of my blog, I’m going to use this years V-Day to tell you a little something about myself.. 

Usually people use Valentine’s Day to express love OR to be bitter that they don’t have the love they would like to have..  [We’re just going to ignore the fact that it’s also a major LUST day… but that’s not the intention of the day. That’s more or less an effect of the commercial realm. However, dinner and a hook up aren’t really my flavor, so fuck that shit. Getting back on track…]

Personally, I like to use every day to express love. 

I believe that love is the be all end all; love possesses a power beyond the human understanding and can only be known through experience; love is divine and when we live in a spirit of love we can yield the power it holds.

As stated in the second sentence of the above paragraph, people cannot understand love without first having experienced love. Being that the society we live in has norms of selfishness and the like, the experience of a pure love is rare because we are not socialized to produce love; love is foreign.

Because of this, many people think of love as a mutual desire between two people which generally manifests through committed relationships and sexual interaction. Yet, how many relationships have you been in or seen that had desire, devotion, and physical intimacy that were not love? They are countless. 

The disappointment and resulting emptiness experienced from this false love causes people to fear love, but love encompasses so much more than the vision society has built of romance…

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Love has always been important to me. I’ve been blessed with a life where I have been able to experience varying loves in my life. I have given and I have received. I’ve been blessed that with each exchange of love, I have been able to gain greater wisdom to live by. 

Several years back is when love began to pour itself into my life and allowing me to see it, showing me great revelations. As a result, I have come to the conclusion that anything worth working for, worth living for, has an element of love. For me to forget the lessons I have learned from love would be to forsake who I have become and who I further aim to be. Today, I live for love, and I wear it on my sleeve.

It is hard to express through words how important love really is to me, but to further explain how I view it… 

During the same semester that I chose to bear the above mark of remembrance for what I found to be my meaning in life, I also took a mythology class. As our final, one of our options was to present a mythology of our own. I wrote mine on love.

**For clarification: The way to understand the word “myth” as used above is not in the general sense of a heroic story about the ancient past. The meaning in this context would be presenting an explanation for some event of phenomenon of life through words believed to be sincerely true by the person, people, or culture that originates the myth. Hence, the assignment option was to present a personal belief to the class. In addition to the presentation, a typed essay version of our mythology was also to be turned in. 

 Without dragging this out any more, I present:

My Mythology of Love

            A lot of times when someone uses the word “love” people get uneasy. While we are raised up being told love is good, we are raised up being shown many times that love is something to be feared and avoided. I think this is due to the fact that when people hear the word love they primarily associate it with being “in love” and relationships, most of which end in failure and pain. And while I too have experienced the pain that can come with love, that is not the mythology I’ve assigned to the word, emotion, or act of love. To me, love is something much greater than we can comprehend, not restricted to romantic relationships, and the meaning in life is to find the moments where we see a glimpse of love in all its purity.

            In the Bible, Jesus says that of faith, hope and love, love is the greatest. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s 1850 poem In Memoriam: 27 gave us this famous quote: ‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’ Even a contemporary writing like Inanna Returns stresses the greatness of love in its first paragraph saying, “We as Pleiadians have always known that love is the essence of creation. All we have ever been is love; love of adventure, love of power, and love of play.” In just a few examples, we can recall in our own lifetime and in human history the many things we’ve heard about love, and damn near every one of them that is remembered and stands the test of time is about how deep and wonderful love is.

            With all these strong statements about the greatness of love, what makes people run from it? It can’t just be pain because people torture themselves through all sorts of other pains habitually: for example, substance abuse, abusive relationships, diets, physical mutilations, etc. If we can endure physical, emotional, and mental abuse from those things, surely we can take the pain from love also. So why do we still avoid it?

            There are stories from the past where we hear of people pursuing love in the face of great dangers and conflicts. But in our present day culture, we don’t see these stories so much any more. In the last century they’ve begun to die out. People have lost their faith in love, for whatever reason, and put the idea of it in the background of their mind. Repression of our inherent need for love and our avoidance of it almost entirely as a society has produced a culture that doesn’t understand what love truly is any more and sees it as nothing more than a broken dream that can never be achieved and therefore should not be sought out.

            So what is love? What is this thing that we were never taught to understand? Older people always tell the younger generation, “When you find love, you’ll know it”. This of course tells the younger generations nothing about love. And while the older generations would be right in what they say (because the best way to know love is to experience it), it does help to know a little bit of what you’re looking for.

            If we look up a dictionary definition of love, you could find a lengthy list of multiple definitions (this number being dependant on which dictionary you’re looking in). From Dictionary.com, for example, here are the first 4 definitions from a list of 28 (from the first given dictionary source):

1.     A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

2.     A feeling of warm, personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

3.     Sexual passion or desire.

4.     A person whom toward love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.

What in the world have we learned from that? We’ve learned that love is some sort of passionate feeling of affection and is felt toward a certain person. That’s not really much of an advancement in our understanding of what love is. No wonder people are so confused about it.

            I don’t use a dictionary to define love in my life though. Our English language, or any human language for that matter, is far too vague to accurately express love in its entirety. It is something that must be seen, felt, and experienced. And in addition, it is something that must be sought after, because I’ve found that love is all around us and the only excuse for not seeing it is our own laziness in making an effort to find it. As far as a written definition can go though, I believe the best would be that found in the Bible:

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

 

What a beautiful description is that? The passage starts by emphasizing how profound love really is, basically saying that without love we are nothing. It then gives the qualities that love displays (patience, kindness, humility, cordiality, selflessness, etc, etc.) which are all things that we seek in our lives. It tells us of love’s power to cease prophecy and still tongues, meaning that it is stronger than any force or action. This love was not directed toward a person. This love was not an urge. This love described was a love that is pure and strong and expressed not only with all good intention but also in deed. It is a love that consumes the heart and soul. It is the love that we all desperately need and search for. Unfortunately, it is also the love that we reject when we see it because our culture has trained us to be a skeptic, that things are “too good to be true”, and that our independence (often displayed by alienating ourselves) is safe while the co-dependence of love makes us vulnerable, weak, and therefore is dangerous.

            All in all, I’d say that I Corinthians 13 sums up what I believe about love. It is not something there to hurt us. It is not something dependant on other people. It is not something that weakens us and makes us a lesser person. It is not something to be feared. It is strong and beautiful, and everything that we will ever need can be found in love.

            I believe in love. I believe that love is the driving force behind everything good in the world. When you seek out love, it is easy to see it all around. The world exists on love. Our broken society tries to bury it under ugliness, but it is still there. And just like in all the classic stories where “love conquers all”, if we make the effort to live a life filled with love by seeking it out, taking it in, and giving it back to others, we can change the world we live in. We don’t have to be prisoners in a world of hurt.

            A smile can make someone’s day, or a simple hello; Taking care of the environment so we can see the beauty of the world we live in, and taking the time to admire and appreciate it every now and then can enliven something inside of us all; Getting to know a person for who they really are and not just the part they play in your life can create a deep and meaningful relationship. All of these are displays of love. If you can’t uplift someone’s spirit, see beauty, feel truly alive, find meaning in others, or make connections with the world that you live in… What in life is worth living for?

            To me, life must be made of love. Life was made for love. A life without love isn’t life; it is emptiness. There is nothing greater than love; it is the only thing worth living for and the only thing worth dying for; it’s all I need: Love.  

Whoever you are, wherever you may be, happy Valentine’s Day. I hope you feel the love.

love isn’t conventional. if it’s really love, you gotta make it and you gotta own it. 

i vote that someone buy me these for valentines day… i will love you forever <3

onceandfuturenoca:

And then I realized it wouldn’t help anything.

Mainly, it was going to be about the scientific definition of life, versus the emotional arguments for abortion, and the twists in logic employed on both sides of the debate.

Because, I mean, come on. If they found a fetus on Mars, NASA would jizz…

feverforgotten:

From one artist to another: Sketch it out. 

 I suppose it’s the only real way to do it… I gotta stop being lazy..

I’ve started another blog. Mind you, it’s actually second blog, like a supplemental blog to this one; It is in no way a replacement blog. It is a blog about my workplace. Oh the joy, yeah? I’m finding that it will probably be dry yet humorous, and if I do say so myself, it’ll be a good read. I don’t have much to say about it as it should be pretty self-explanatory. Without further hullabaloo and ramblings, I highly suggest clicking here to read about My Stay at The Sleepy Time Tea Palace (obviously NOT where I really work, although that would be pretty damn cool…). There is  already an introductory post and “first blog” for your reading enjoyment. Also, I vote that you follow it. Just sayin… Have fun!

someharmendures:

Some damage is too severe, some harm endures. And what you have to do is accept it. And by accept it I mean, don’t be the paralyzed person in the bed who is waiting to walk again. Realize, it’s never gonna happen. And find some other way to get around –swing from a vine, get a Mad Max wheelchair. Anything but…wait.
— Augusten Burroughs

 I absolutely LOVE Augusten Burroughs. As of yet, all I’ve read is Running With Scissors” [also a movie, so you can watch it if you don’t have the desire to read it.. yet]. I want to read his other memoirs, though. He’s had a tough life, and he’s got a lot of great things to say. I’d highly suggest him to anyone looking for a good read.

P.S. He’s the one who made me realize I need high ceilings.. ^_^