A funny little word
Need to post something, but after half a dozen false starts at some broad sweeping deep philosophical analysis, I need to just give that up in favor of what's been immediately running through my head these past few weeks.
It really grabbed my attention when the whole gay marriage hubbub blew up again. It hit me hard this time. I know any number of people in gay or otherwise nontraditional relationships filled with amazing love, and the thought that so many people vehemently reject those relationships simply because they're not "traditional" (whatever that means) relationships honestly baffles me. I like to think I can get inside people's heads and empathize pretty well even on subjects I don't agree with, but this willful rejection completely confounds me. And it saddens me: I think as someone who's censored his own emotional side for so long, I'm especially sensitive to external sources of disapproval for things that seem to me so amazing and beautiful as a loving relationship. Hell, even of a purely lustful relationship if it's handled healthily. I smile every time I see people hold hands tenderly -- regardless of details meaningless to me like sex, gender, or race -- and I take it as a huge blow when people reject that out of hand, citing those same meaningless details.
So despite a present backdrop of an amazingly loving relationship, it was really that external mess that really brought love to the front of my attention these past few weeks. Since then it's come up a few more times. Sometimes it's been simple recognition of little crushes. Sometimes it's been trying to figure out how I feel about people the in my life. Sometimes it's even been the topic of love dropping specifically into a conversation.
One of these in particular stuck in my head. I chatted with my Dad over the weekend. I have excellent conversations with him. He's an amazing man. He was recounting to me an incident in which someone close to both of us scolded him and told him he really needed to figure out what love was. It was a matter of unfortunate and difficult misunderstanding in his story, but it caught on that same "love" trigger that's been bopping around my head.
It caught because I've been struggling with that very definition myself. It seems like that one funny little word means something different to everyone who says it or hears it said. Some people use it only in the deepest of intimate relationships. Some people toss it around wherever they think they're supposed to (whatever that means) and without much emotional significance at all. And people fall at every point in between, and sometimes even entirely outside that oversimplified continuum. Some people make strong distinctions between "love" and "in love"; these are lost on me. All of it baffles me, honestly, and so for fear of engendering misunderstanding I've learned hesitation with the term even in spite of my emotional opening of late. And that hesitation sometimes saddens me, because surrounded in an environment of my own emotional opening I feel blocked in communicating how I'm learning to feel toward people. Sometimes I feel like this lack of adequate vocabulary hampers even my own recognition of those subtleties of feeling. It's frustrating.
And then last night I met a person who shares words of love with the world more easily than the most flippant users of the word and yet with the full depth and honesty of those who would reserve it for the most intimate of their relationships. It really bowled me over because part of me recognized a big part of my own nature in those words, hiding behind many years of walls.
«Écoutez bien le cœur. Il parle doucement, mais sa voix peut illuminer le monde entier.» I wrote that when I was in high school, just beginning to learn French. I had some recognition of it but had sadly learned by then that I couldn't express it in my life. My Dad's told me stories of things I said and did as a young child before I learned that cold form of self-censorship. These last few weeks -- and today in particular -- find me desperately wanting to reconnect to that state of easy but deep love that I lived in my youth and recognized through strong walls in my adolescence, to examine what I've learned in my time in this world, and to separate the wheat of honest maturity from the chaff of cynicism and fear.
And to learn to communicate it all.
It's a pity
It's a crying shame
He pulled you down again
How painful it must be
To bruise so easily
Inside
It's a pity
It's a downright crime
It happens all the time
You want to stay little daddy's girl
You want to hide from a vicious world
Outside
Don't cry
You know the tears will do no good
So dry your eyes
Oh, your daddy
He's the iron man
Battleship wrecked on dry land
Your mamma
She's a bitter bride
She'll never be satisfied
Do you know?
And that's not right
But don't cry
You know the tears will do no good
So dry your eyes
Oh, they told you life is hard
Misery from the start
It's dull
It's slow
It's painful
But, I'll tell you life is sweet
In spite of the misery
There's so much more to be grateful
Well, who do you believe?
Who will you listen to?
Who will it be?
'Cause it's high time that you decide
In your own mind
I've tried to comfort you
I've tried to tell you to be patient
They are blind
And they can't see
Fortune gonna come one day
They're all gonna fade away
Your daddy, the war machine
and
Your momma, the long and suffering
Prisoner of what she can not see
For they told you life is hard
Misery from the start
It's dull
It's slow
It's painful
But, I'll tell you life is sweet
In spite of the misery
There's so much more to be grateful
So, who will you believe?
Who will you listen to?
Who will it be?
Because it's high time that you decide
It's time to make up your own
your own state of mind
Oh, they told you that life is long
Be thankful when it's done
Don't ask for more
be grateful
But, I'll tell you life is short
Be thankful
Because before you know
It will be over
'Cause life is sweet
Life is, oh, so very short
Life is sweet
And life is, oh, so very short
Life is sweet
And life is sweet
And life is sweet
It really grabbed my attention when the whole gay marriage hubbub blew up again. It hit me hard this time. I know any number of people in gay or otherwise nontraditional relationships filled with amazing love, and the thought that so many people vehemently reject those relationships simply because they're not "traditional" (whatever that means) relationships honestly baffles me. I like to think I can get inside people's heads and empathize pretty well even on subjects I don't agree with, but this willful rejection completely confounds me. And it saddens me: I think as someone who's censored his own emotional side for so long, I'm especially sensitive to external sources of disapproval for things that seem to me so amazing and beautiful as a loving relationship. Hell, even of a purely lustful relationship if it's handled healthily. I smile every time I see people hold hands tenderly -- regardless of details meaningless to me like sex, gender, or race -- and I take it as a huge blow when people reject that out of hand, citing those same meaningless details.
So despite a present backdrop of an amazingly loving relationship, it was really that external mess that really brought love to the front of my attention these past few weeks. Since then it's come up a few more times. Sometimes it's been simple recognition of little crushes. Sometimes it's been trying to figure out how I feel about people the in my life. Sometimes it's even been the topic of love dropping specifically into a conversation.
One of these in particular stuck in my head. I chatted with my Dad over the weekend. I have excellent conversations with him. He's an amazing man. He was recounting to me an incident in which someone close to both of us scolded him and told him he really needed to figure out what love was. It was a matter of unfortunate and difficult misunderstanding in his story, but it caught on that same "love" trigger that's been bopping around my head.
It caught because I've been struggling with that very definition myself. It seems like that one funny little word means something different to everyone who says it or hears it said. Some people use it only in the deepest of intimate relationships. Some people toss it around wherever they think they're supposed to (whatever that means) and without much emotional significance at all. And people fall at every point in between, and sometimes even entirely outside that oversimplified continuum. Some people make strong distinctions between "love" and "in love"; these are lost on me. All of it baffles me, honestly, and so for fear of engendering misunderstanding I've learned hesitation with the term even in spite of my emotional opening of late. And that hesitation sometimes saddens me, because surrounded in an environment of my own emotional opening I feel blocked in communicating how I'm learning to feel toward people. Sometimes I feel like this lack of adequate vocabulary hampers even my own recognition of those subtleties of feeling. It's frustrating.
And then last night I met a person who shares words of love with the world more easily than the most flippant users of the word and yet with the full depth and honesty of those who would reserve it for the most intimate of their relationships. It really bowled me over because part of me recognized a big part of my own nature in those words, hiding behind many years of walls.
«Écoutez bien le cœur. Il parle doucement, mais sa voix peut illuminer le monde entier.» I wrote that when I was in high school, just beginning to learn French. I had some recognition of it but had sadly learned by then that I couldn't express it in my life. My Dad's told me stories of things I said and did as a young child before I learned that cold form of self-censorship. These last few weeks -- and today in particular -- find me desperately wanting to reconnect to that state of easy but deep love that I lived in my youth and recognized through strong walls in my adolescence, to examine what I've learned in my time in this world, and to separate the wheat of honest maturity from the chaff of cynicism and fear.
And to learn to communicate it all.
It's a pity
It's a crying shame
He pulled you down again
How painful it must be
To bruise so easily
Inside
It's a pity
It's a downright crime
It happens all the time
You want to stay little daddy's girl
You want to hide from a vicious world
Outside
Don't cry
You know the tears will do no good
So dry your eyes
Oh, your daddy
He's the iron man
Battleship wrecked on dry land
Your mamma
She's a bitter bride
She'll never be satisfied
Do you know?
And that's not right
But don't cry
You know the tears will do no good
So dry your eyes
Oh, they told you life is hard
Misery from the start
It's dull
It's slow
It's painful
But, I'll tell you life is sweet
In spite of the misery
There's so much more to be grateful
Well, who do you believe?
Who will you listen to?
Who will it be?
'Cause it's high time that you decide
In your own mind
I've tried to comfort you
I've tried to tell you to be patient
They are blind
And they can't see
Fortune gonna come one day
They're all gonna fade away
Your daddy, the war machine
and
Your momma, the long and suffering
Prisoner of what she can not see
For they told you life is hard
Misery from the start
It's dull
It's slow
It's painful
But, I'll tell you life is sweet
In spite of the misery
There's so much more to be grateful
So, who will you believe?
Who will you listen to?
Who will it be?
Because it's high time that you decide
It's time to make up your own
your own state of mind
Oh, they told you that life is long
Be thankful when it's done
Don't ask for more
be grateful
But, I'll tell you life is short
Be thankful
Because before you know
It will be over
'Cause life is sweet
Life is, oh, so very short
Life is sweet
And life is, oh, so very short
Life is sweet
And life is sweet
And life is sweet