Saturday, December 28, 2013

Grab the Gas Masks Love is in the air (and I hear its contagious)

Over the Christmas break I have had a lot of time to reflect, and boy did I blow it by not making a cheesy “reason for the season” post… so moving on from that tragedy I am not quite sure where to go with this post. Somewhere around Christmas Eve I started thinking that it would be a great idea to discuss all the major emotions in a series of posts that would… wait no bad idea… that would go downhill fast. But of course you all want me to rant about my new tools (yes I did in fact get those 2 years in a row now), or perhaps you would like me to go into great detail about our time watching (and/or mocking) Hallmark movies as a family. But I think I will talk about an even less personal topic, love.

(Yes! I did it! That last line was a Bombshell!)I bet all three of my readers are wondering why I just said that love wasn’t personal, or perhaps simply commenting that this blog could use with a few less of my thought process being recreated on the page, and to you I say it’s my blog I DO WHAT I WANT.

So where were we… oh yes, love that thing that everybody and their mother seems to have an entire book of clichés about. I may have lied when I said this would not focus on Hallmark movies, because if we are to talk about clichés where else would we start? According to their formula (seriously I think they just take old scripts and change a few names) love can be characterized roughly as “feelings and stuff”, ok so not quite that much like how a fourth grader would say it but you get the point. If we are to believe even for a second that they portray the model of romantic love then we would live and decide our lives in that area based solely on attraction, be it physical, emotional, or otherwise. But coming from someone who was a modicum of experience watching those relationships fall apart (I do go to high school after all) I can say I have my doubts in the merits of that system. I may be wrong or just far too cynical but it looks as if we are practicing for divorce as teenagers. Let me explain… every day I watch my peers “fall in love” (which shouldn’t be a saying but I digress), get far too physical far too fast, and all too often break up just as suddenly. The reason I’m not overly fond of that kind of living shouldn’t need explanation but perhaps my loathing of a certain phrase might. “Falling in love” implies a lack of control, and certainly if you are discussing attraction then “falling” certainly applies, it is fast and uncontrollable, but love is nothing of the sort. Perhaps I am naive but I believe that we use that word far too loosely, we LOVE that pizza, millions of people LOVE that pop artist, but in either example aside from a few bizarre outliers none of us really means it. The reason I say this is because LOVE is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

And if you haven’t figured it out quite yet I was quoting scripture, yes that dreaded “draconian” text that is spoken of in hushed tones in school, specifically 1 Corinthians 13:1-7. And say what you will about anything else inside that text but the wisdom of this passage is pretty obvious. If I had to sum it up in one sentence it would be that in all circumstances love is a verb. Love is not an emotion, or a feeling, and I think we have missed the mark entirely by applying it so unanimously to romantic notions. The ubiquity of love in our pop culture is hard to miss, it (or a perversion thereof) is the subject of most of our most beloved songs, and every b-rate film has at least one love driven sub plot. However, if conventional wisdom is to be bucked (and it should) then the feelings we celebrate are inconsequential. That is not to say they are not powerful, or that they are bad. In fact if they didn’t hold such sway over us do you think the world would have been so shocked when the Beatles managed to have chart topping singles that (Gasp) weren’t about love?! The point of all of this is actually quite simple, emotions can be great, and if you happen to like how the people you love look then bonus points to you guys, but even the perfect person cannot be so forever, and love comes in when the façade fades and you are forced to come to terms with the reality of others. They (we) are all flawed and sometimes love looks like encouraging your son’s stupid hobbies by giving him the tools he needs for Christmas.