Life is a funny thing – strange words you might think. And you might question. Funny as in - Ha! Ha! - or funny as in strange. Let me clarify, funny in a sad sense, I mean it to mean a contradiction in terminology.
Our lives are filled with inconsistency; our emotions towards life are Jack in the Boxes, never static, always on the move, up and down, up and down, our lives are in constant motion, and each of us have numerous facets, many of which we hide even from ourselves, and yet, we are all very similar. We are filled with contrary emotions when it comes to love.
For some, love is like a butterfly, flutter, flutter, flutter and it is gone, and we move on, but that is applicable mainly to the love of a man and women. With children it is somewhat different. That love represent more of the chrysalis - cocoon type of love, and parents very rarely leave that spot – love of our children is unconditional, giving of ourselves to our next generation, but could that be classed as hereditary? Are we programmed, and do it for survival of our own genes, and nature disguises it as love for our continued survival?
I have questioned myself many times what love actually is, what are the ingredients that makes up the mix? You can’t eat, smell, hold it. Physical it is not, but an abstraction, a firing in the brain of wanting the object of that love to be near to you.
A longing for that thing or person, which fills the mind with warmth, and to have the feeling reciprocated, makes it even better, the bonus, payback if you like. Though it is not essential to make love happen, it does make the emotion that much more deeper and more powerful. And yet, often, we just fritter it away by our own actions and feel sad when it flies away from us, and often we don’t know how to get it back, lost in a world of our own making.
Is love a physical sexual feeling, a sense of belonging: to own and control that person? We can hold emotion towards a thing - an animal - inanimate objects. Your home, car, money, prestige, fame, recognition, adulation, have all been loved in some degree over the ages.
From a surgical viewpoint, love is but a chemical reaction in the brain and little else, but for me that is a journey far to far, a too simplistic and naive view of life and love. A living thing – a person, an animal, is more than chemical. With a person, love can be as deep as a touching of two souls. For those of you who have ridden that horse, you’ll know to what I’m referring - I've been there, the ride can be bumpy but well worth the trip - it is one of the great wonders of life. Feelings and emotions are real, as real as beaches, mountains, trees, and far more beautiful.
You wouldn’t give your life for a beach, a mountain or a tree, no matter how beautiful, but you would, and often give it with a glad heart for love, if it meant saving that person whom you love. We all have experienced these feelings, every one of us in some measure – more or less.
Our lives are filled with inconsistency; our emotions towards life are Jack in the Boxes, never static, always on the move, up and down, up and down, our lives are in constant motion, and each of us have numerous facets, many of which we hide even from ourselves, and yet, we are all very similar. We are filled with contrary emotions when it comes to love.
For some, love is like a butterfly, flutter, flutter, flutter and it is gone, and we move on, but that is applicable mainly to the love of a man and women. With children it is somewhat different. That love represent more of the chrysalis - cocoon type of love, and parents very rarely leave that spot – love of our children is unconditional, giving of ourselves to our next generation, but could that be classed as hereditary? Are we programmed, and do it for survival of our own genes, and nature disguises it as love for our continued survival?
I have questioned myself many times what love actually is, what are the ingredients that makes up the mix? You can’t eat, smell, hold it. Physical it is not, but an abstraction, a firing in the brain of wanting the object of that love to be near to you.
A longing for that thing or person, which fills the mind with warmth, and to have the feeling reciprocated, makes it even better, the bonus, payback if you like. Though it is not essential to make love happen, it does make the emotion that much more deeper and more powerful. And yet, often, we just fritter it away by our own actions and feel sad when it flies away from us, and often we don’t know how to get it back, lost in a world of our own making.
Is love a physical sexual feeling, a sense of belonging: to own and control that person? We can hold emotion towards a thing - an animal - inanimate objects. Your home, car, money, prestige, fame, recognition, adulation, have all been loved in some degree over the ages.
From a surgical viewpoint, love is but a chemical reaction in the brain and little else, but for me that is a journey far to far, a too simplistic and naive view of life and love. A living thing – a person, an animal, is more than chemical. With a person, love can be as deep as a touching of two souls. For those of you who have ridden that horse, you’ll know to what I’m referring - I've been there, the ride can be bumpy but well worth the trip - it is one of the great wonders of life. Feelings and emotions are real, as real as beaches, mountains, trees, and far more beautiful.
You wouldn’t give your life for a beach, a mountain or a tree, no matter how beautiful, but you would, and often give it with a glad heart for love, if it meant saving that person whom you love. We all have experienced these feelings, every one of us in some measure – more or less.
Therein, lies the difference – the rub - most people wouldn’t willingly give their life for an object, but would for a person whom they love, but here again, nothing is that straight forward. Millions throughout history have given their life for an ideal, the love of democracy is but one example.
Some demonstrate only a love for money, - sad but true - and place it above all else, and yes, they would die in the getting of it. Everything pales into insignificance when it comes to money for these people, and quite a few, who have won and lost it, can’t live without it and commit suicide rather than face a future alone without the crutch of wealth to ease their pain.
Can you start to see why I believe life is funny in a sad sense?
Now I’ll get to the crux of the matter - the wonder -to share with you what love means to me. To answer that, I will quote from a far wiser person than myself: my father, and what it meant to him. But first, I need to set the scene.
When I was young and in the garden with my father, with whom I spent a lot of time, he told me when he was young, that once he found a thrush’s nest with five little chicks inside. The parents had been killed, and my father removed the nest and chicks and placed them in a box. They belonged to him, he had given them life, at the least, he had certainly saved them from death, and so he reared them, and then he let them go, and of course they flew away.
“Did you not love the birds daddy?” I asked.
“Of course,” came his forceful reply.
“Why let them go? They would be dead without you, they belong to you, owe you their life.”
He smiled a little, I can see that smile even now, and he said.
“You have overlooked one main point: they never belonged to me in the first place. They belong to the land and the countryside. I was only helping them on their way. It was their time to move on, just as your time will come to fly the nest and make your way in the world. To deny any one this right is to deny them their freedom.”
“Did you ever see the birds again?” I asked. He was quite shocked at this question.
“This is their garden; they were born here. This garden belongs to them; they are a part of the garden as much as that tree,” he said, pointing to one of the trees in the garden.
“If they are still in the garden and you see them every day,” I said innocently, “they are not free, otherwise they would be gone.”
He lit his pipe, thought for a minute and answered. “Freedom is about the ability to choose where you wish to be, to spend time to suit yourself. To be free, you must be there by your own free will.”
I replied, “By letting the birds go free, you gave them different options, and they chose to stay, so the act of giving them freedom resulted in them staying. They were captives in their own garden, since that is where they wished to be.”
My father smiled at this comment and looked round the garden in satisfaction. “You've got it,” he said. “If you wish to keep something close to you, give it the ability to fly away, but make the staying a lot better.”
So for me love is about giving, unconditional giving, and like the birds in my father’s garden, it will boomerang back to you with ten-fold happiness.
Have a good day, and remember, if you can’t have a good day, please, stay away from a bad one.
Some demonstrate only a love for money, - sad but true - and place it above all else, and yes, they would die in the getting of it. Everything pales into insignificance when it comes to money for these people, and quite a few, who have won and lost it, can’t live without it and commit suicide rather than face a future alone without the crutch of wealth to ease their pain.
Can you start to see why I believe life is funny in a sad sense?
Now I’ll get to the crux of the matter - the wonder -to share with you what love means to me. To answer that, I will quote from a far wiser person than myself: my father, and what it meant to him. But first, I need to set the scene.
When I was young and in the garden with my father, with whom I spent a lot of time, he told me when he was young, that once he found a thrush’s nest with five little chicks inside. The parents had been killed, and my father removed the nest and chicks and placed them in a box. They belonged to him, he had given them life, at the least, he had certainly saved them from death, and so he reared them, and then he let them go, and of course they flew away.
“Did you not love the birds daddy?” I asked.
“Of course,” came his forceful reply.
“Why let them go? They would be dead without you, they belong to you, owe you their life.”
He smiled a little, I can see that smile even now, and he said.
“You have overlooked one main point: they never belonged to me in the first place. They belong to the land and the countryside. I was only helping them on their way. It was their time to move on, just as your time will come to fly the nest and make your way in the world. To deny any one this right is to deny them their freedom.”
“Did you ever see the birds again?” I asked. He was quite shocked at this question.
“This is their garden; they were born here. This garden belongs to them; they are a part of the garden as much as that tree,” he said, pointing to one of the trees in the garden.
“If they are still in the garden and you see them every day,” I said innocently, “they are not free, otherwise they would be gone.”
He lit his pipe, thought for a minute and answered. “Freedom is about the ability to choose where you wish to be, to spend time to suit yourself. To be free, you must be there by your own free will.”
I replied, “By letting the birds go free, you gave them different options, and they chose to stay, so the act of giving them freedom resulted in them staying. They were captives in their own garden, since that is where they wished to be.”
My father smiled at this comment and looked round the garden in satisfaction. “You've got it,” he said. “If you wish to keep something close to you, give it the ability to fly away, but make the staying a lot better.”
So for me love is about giving, unconditional giving, and like the birds in my father’s garden, it will boomerang back to you with ten-fold happiness.
Have a good day, and remember, if you can’t have a good day, please, stay away from a bad one.
My father's words, and they come from my first published novel, "Of Boys, Men and Mountains," please, get a copy and read the story. It is a truely inspirational book, and I get copious comments almost everyday about the story from different people, from many walk of life, in this country and from America.
...and, in this respect, so is Respect a Funny Thing.
ReplyDeleteSo many people think that respect is a one way street. But in order to gain it, one first has to give it - this is especially so with children, how else will they learn?
That is so true Kevin, respect has many strands, but as you say, “in order to gain it, one first has to give it,” and the law of attraction will do the rest. Respect nature, a person, and somehow, as if by magic, it respect you.
ReplyDeleteHow? I just don't know, but it does, my father, now dead, knew this, and he could barely read, and yet, he had the wisdom of Job. Similarly with children, if they are brought up to respect, they will respect, but as you commented, first they must be taught to respect, or "how else will they learn."
I you have a chance, please read my book, "Of Boys, Men and Mountains" it is based on what my father believed, and, if you then have the time, write to me about what you think. Thank you for commenting to my blog.
I am surprised that you believe love can have anything to do with sadness. Love is a joyous event. It brings only happiness, fulfillment and growth. It costs nothing, when experienced fully it is freely given, lasts more than one life time and has no down side. When love is experienced as sadness it is merely because of our own innability to hold onto it. Only then is it experienced as sadness, but it is usualy through our own fault of some sort. We are unwillingness to do the work necessary to hold on to it.
ReplyDeleteI am sure your father would have approved of this saying.
He would have said something like ' God gave us this beautiful garden my son but he expects us to do the maintainance'.
If you fail to maintain the garden of your love, fail to see the need for growth (for things are in a state of constant expansion), the bird will take flight and may be lost, sometimes forever. Similarly you cant keep your child in a nursery forever, or they too will be lost.
To deal with our other point, yes of course we are hard wired to love our children. People come into our lives of 'a reason, a season, a lifetime' The contract we have with our kids is a lifetime one. But even that is no accident. In fact there are no accidents in the universe. All is as its meant to be.
The real sadness is when one tries to persuade oneself that a season contract is ok when it isnt. Its usually because they are too complacent, or simply lack the moral courage to do what their heart is telling them.
Love does not fail us. We simply fail ourselves when love is misshandled.
Hi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteI also said that love was wonderful, and of course it is a "joyous event" and "brings much happiness, fulfilment and growth." But when you say, "It cost nothing." There, I disagree with you, not in money terms, if that is your reference, but in misunderstanding, even if it is “freely given.”
Where there is an inability to hold on to it, then, it does cost, in mental anguish, in sadness, and in lost dreams, when the rope you hold - called love - keeps slipping through your fingers.
The cost is real to your soul and to your mental state. I'm not talking about superficial love, but a deep, lasting, an almost merger of two separate individuals. When that is lost, a piece of you ceases to exist, and therein lies the cost, please take it from me, I know the impotence of the feeling.
You last sentence is by far the most poignant, and hits hard in making your argument relevant. When you said: “Love does not fail us. We simply fail ourselves when love is mishandled." Which is an absolute truth: for me, those two sentences says it all. Thank you for reading my blog, and more so, for your comments, have a good day.
From your article you have had a bad love experiance I think, you've lost it and the words you use are sad. The way the express yourself I find it moves me, your words are pictures, but love is not a picture it is more important than that.
ReplyDelete/read you piece with interest, I to loved and lost, over it now big time I was sad and he left me broke and in debt but I did love him. Think I still do a bit but now way will I have him back. when you sad wonderful and that I know where you are coming from.
ReplyDeletewell it not over till the fat lady sings so if she aint dead yet go get her boyo.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIf the fat lady tells you to sling your hook, what do you do? I didn't mean the article to appear sad. I was trying to show how wonderful love can be - and what it means to me - and from what you say - you understand what I'm saying, you say, "I know where you are coming from." And I believe you do.
Thank you, quite a number of people have also commented,and say what you say, "your words are pictures" much appreciated.
Please read my other books and let me know what you think, my latest novel, "The Tour" everyone seems to like, and many people say my writing style is somewhat different from my other two books. That is true, my writing is deepening - a good friend of mine said it would, and it is so.
Roy.
Love is rubbish its just sex with a man
ReplyDeleteJan.
Jan,
ReplyDeleteSex and love are worlds apart. You have probably just been hurt, and I can understand that. Me too.
For me the love was just as potent even at the end. It will remain always even if I could not. He was my best friend and always will be.
Hope you find happiness Jan. Likewise you Roy. Your writing is crafted,inspirational (in boys men) and your blogs thought provoking (even if rather devisive at times)
Be carefull of that Roy. Remember. 'No tree is so silly that it encourages its branches to quarrel amongst themselves'.
Hi Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou are on the button, love and sex are a world apart, and Jan - I feel you are mistaken - love is about two people, (I mean between a man and woman) and it can ever only be between two people, merging into one: independent - yes of course, but there for each other no matter what the hardship irrespective of problems.
You have read one of my books, (both, Jan and Anonymous)OF BOYS, MEN AND MOUNTAINS, but you both seen to have loved and lost, it feel that in your words, and from what you say, he/she is still your best friend. I find that hard to except. Is that person still in your life? If he/she is, you have not lost, if he/she isn’t... only you will know the reason.
My blogs, I do write to be thought provoking, I want people to think about the subject of which I write. Sometimes, you must be controversial to make your point, and to speak out when you feel strongly about something. I see nothing wrong with that, even, if, as you say, it can be somewhat divisive.
But what if you find in the midst of all of the difficulties, all of the pain, that you discover 2 fundamental things never known to you before: Firstly, love comes from within and ironicaly by an act of supreme grace. The very love you were giving and, found yourself capable of, began to change you on the inside. For me it bacame a transformative force that healed an otherwise broken soul.
ReplyDeleteSecondly, what if you find that love paradoxically was (is) still a matter of choice. Its a huge paradox but one I know to be true.
The gift of being able to love a person that much, for that long, is not one I intend to squander. This is irrespective of whether for many years that love was not propertly understood by him or even respected.
That ultimately is his problem not mine, my job was only ever to learn to love that much, irrespective of outcome.
This is why although I will no longer compromise myself by his actions. I can still be his friend. It does not mean I have to be in his life however.
His punishment (Roy) (Jan) is not my responsibility. It will come from a huge degree of isolation that he now feels day by day from being seperated.
You do not understand this. Your fomer contributor did. They talked about a choice between a grievance and a miracle. The miracle is forgivness. In my case today forgivness is also something i give to myself.
For me, that is the essence of love and I thank him (albeit silently)for giving me the experiencing / the opportunity of loving that much in one life time.
Immature love says, I love you because I need you. Mature love says, I need you because I love you.
ReplyDeleteRufina Lewis
Twiiters.