Love Evolves Everywhere, Everyone, Everything

Over the past few weeks I’ve had to question myself and wonder… what really is this thing called… Love? When I was sixteen I thought I knew. I would meet a girl and then “poof” LOVE! Or I’d see a video game I wanted and “poof” LOVE! I had really no clue. What is the idea behind it? Where does it stem from? The figurative heart? Or head?

As teens, we fall in “love” with our first, second, third…. Significant other and we plan ahead to be together for a long time because we don’t have the life experiences to understand that, sometimes things have an ending. If you’ve only been to a lake, you cannot comprehend the ocean can you? Nope.

I remember my first break up. I was like Denise Huxtable. Goodness. Remember that breakup? All she did was keep walking around the house singing that stupid song all the time? Everyone kept telling me ‘You’re only in like with her, not in love with her. She’s your first not your last. Trust me.’ Even her mother told me that. I didn’t believe that. Believe me, I’ve had quite a few girlfriends in between. *Insert my smiling here*

Is it that I was naïve to think that I would find someone else one day? Doubtful. I like to think I was just young. Too young.


LOVE OF MUSIC

Ever since I can remember, I have ALWAYS had this love affair with music. If it has a beat I will give it a listen. When I was five, my kindergarten class went to the middle school in Lunenburg to get an introduction to musical instruments. I heard and saw the Alto Saxophone. (INSERT PIC OF ALTO SAX) I fell in love. There was no ‘like’ here. It was love at the age of five. I even asked the kid if I could just touch his saxophone. I remember that day. HAHA! It was funny. I will never forget that day. I couldn’t even pick up a saxophone til seventh grade. Which would be seven years later, I held on to that love for all that time.

I started playing in seventh grade and I loved it, then I ‘discovered’ jazz band. Swing music. Oh… my… God. REALLY! Improv jazz! YOU’RE TELLING ME I CAN MAKE UP SOLOS WITHIN A SONG!!!! I was for sure hooked!!! One problem… I sucked. I didn’t know fingerings, keys, I couldn’t read music to save my life… I worked at it and worked at it. Every relationship needs work. This one needed a lot of it. I knew that as a seventh grader. My music teacher even said to me that I may want to try something else for a bit first until I got the hang of reading music. I was desperate to figure it out. Very desperate.

By sophomore year, I was much better after practicing my butt off and working at it. Love requires work, patience, and time to grow understanding and to be understood by others. As it did with my tonality and harmony with the band. As I said in an earlier post… anger, took my love from me. I put my hand through a window and it derailed my musical career. All that hard work… gone. I was a DJ later on in life for a bit with was a lot of fun and I loved it just as much as my “first” love. Still, the lesson is that if I had kept my cool I may have never lost my first love to begin with.

LOVE OF SELF

This is the EXACT opposite of love of others. It takes a long time for most to have this. Others make it hard to love self and they plant that seed of doubt that can leave you doubting the love you should have in your abilities or self. It is THIS love that is paramount to all others. Love for yourself should not, must not, cannot be taken away. If you love yourself no one can take your swag, confidence, whatever you want to call it and it shows. Hands down.

LOVE OF FAMILY

When I was younger, I always hated that my family was big. There were far too many people that were always in my business and wanting to be up in everything I did. No matter what I thought or felt, everyone had an opinion of what I did. The older I got, the worse it became. Either way, I love my family just the same. When it comes to loving family, sometimes you just have to let go. If they do nothing but criticize your every move and refuse to let you grow as an individual, you must move on and let things go. If you look to my past blog post about my sister who said nasty things about my daughter… it’s been about four years since we have said more than five or six words to one another. I highly doubt I will say anything more than that to her ever. Sometimes it’s best to let things fall apart than to lose it all trying to save one.

LOVE OF BEING RIGHT

This is the best one. It’s (for the most part) a necessity a point of reference to find one self at the winning end of an argument to feel accomplished at the end of the day. I for one… am not. I used to be. It takes learning and practice to un-train your mind to need that feeling. When it comes to religion, politics, self, sports, or family values most times these are hot buttons. I find myself a target of argument or ridicule. I feel strongly about all of them. Do I need to argue with everyone about them? Nope. I am always being verbally ‘pushed’ by someone about something sometime. I am usually easygoing about most things but honestly, I don’t care that much about being right. I only care about being. Simply being.

LOVE, LIVE, LEARN

Many people have variations on ‘love’. It all depends. There are circumstances on what they in fact love. Any of these can push a person to act a sertain way. Love can give way to hate. Love for someone or something can make a person hate anything that will stand in the way of that love. It’s the maturity and experience level that will make someone stand up and see what is important. Which love is important? What matters the most?

Henry Thoreau was so tired of the bougeoise way of life and the people arould him that he had to leave. He said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.”

Live, you must live…. Quite simply…. There is no time like now to live. I will share another quote from Bruce Lee.

“Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”

I say this, water evolves and adapts. No matter what happens it will simply be. If the temperature is too hot, the molecules dance and vapor is formed and the water escapes. If the water cools to freezing, the molecules huddle together and stop moving to become ice. Learn to be water. Never stop learning.

More importantly, NEVER EVER EVER, stop loving yourself… ever. If no one else loves you, love yourself. It’s a start.