I have to dedicate this blog to a friend. Her random Facebook status update has bought me back to updating this blog. She asked whether we were guilty of using the word love too freely. So were we trivialising the potential intensity and power of that simple 4 letter word?
She got some interesting responses, but not one from me! I suppose in truth I didn't really have an answer. Subconsciously I may even have thought it was a frivolous question and that it really didn't matter. One comment on the status update suggested that the since the word had such positive connotations, it was better than all the negativity in todays society.
It was only quite suddenly that it dawned on me that perhaps this was the crux of the problem. Through a lack of exposure or real understanding of the word, was love being used too freely to gloss over society's real problems? I am pretty sure the answer to that question is yes. Until this point I hadn't actually given the question much thought it was only when I came across some poetry that I actually started to think about it. Rumi a 13th century philosopher advocated unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love.
"In the existence of your love, I have become non existent, this non existence, linked to you is better than all existence."
The profound declarations of love in his poetry go beyond what we hear with the almost plastic artists we hear blaring from our iPods. Another verse:
"Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it"
I have quoted two sentences that I feel I can vaguely comprehend, there were so many others that I'm not sure I have the capacity to really grasp. What they all seem to have in common though, was an unconditional, unwavering, steadfast love which has been beautifully expressed through poetry but appreciated by only a few.
After studying such poetry i am quite often thrust suddenly into the sounds of Justin Bieber which perhaps more appropriately is loved by my 2 year old. so one of his songs state "Love me love me say that you love me, fool me fool me oh how you do me"
I know Justin Bieber fans aren't seeking lyrical depth. A few good sounds put together, will get us all singing and grooving along but the constant exposure to such a base interpretation of love is perhaps guilty of trivialising the purity of love expressed by the likes of Rumi. This lacklustre form of love is the type widely banded around and it is this hollowness that supposedly inspired the original facebook status update.
She got some interesting responses, but not one from me! I suppose in truth I didn't really have an answer. Subconsciously I may even have thought it was a frivolous question and that it really didn't matter. One comment on the status update suggested that the since the word had such positive connotations, it was better than all the negativity in todays society.
It was only quite suddenly that it dawned on me that perhaps this was the crux of the problem. Through a lack of exposure or real understanding of the word, was love being used too freely to gloss over society's real problems? I am pretty sure the answer to that question is yes. Until this point I hadn't actually given the question much thought it was only when I came across some poetry that I actually started to think about it. Rumi a 13th century philosopher advocated unlimited tolerance, positive reasoning, goodness, charity and awareness through love.
"In the existence of your love, I have become non existent, this non existence, linked to you is better than all existence."
The profound declarations of love in his poetry go beyond what we hear with the almost plastic artists we hear blaring from our iPods. Another verse:
"Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself you have built against it"
I have quoted two sentences that I feel I can vaguely comprehend, there were so many others that I'm not sure I have the capacity to really grasp. What they all seem to have in common though, was an unconditional, unwavering, steadfast love which has been beautifully expressed through poetry but appreciated by only a few.
After studying such poetry i am quite often thrust suddenly into the sounds of Justin Bieber which perhaps more appropriately is loved by my 2 year old. so one of his songs state "Love me love me say that you love me, fool me fool me oh how you do me"
I know Justin Bieber fans aren't seeking lyrical depth. A few good sounds put together, will get us all singing and grooving along but the constant exposure to such a base interpretation of love is perhaps guilty of trivialising the purity of love expressed by the likes of Rumi. This lacklustre form of love is the type widely banded around and it is this hollowness that supposedly inspired the original facebook status update.
1 comment:
That was exactly the point!
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