With Valentine’s Day tomorrow, the ideas of love and romance grow on everyone’s mind. We think about roses, chocolates, perfume, and all the other things that characterize this time. What we don’t think about, though, is everything that we miss every day of the rest of our lives. Our culture, despite having a holiday that celebrates it, has managed to suck a lot of real love from our lives, substituting it with artificial things that don’t give us what we truly need.
Take a look around, if you will, and see what we embrace. Look at our music, our movies, and our books. Many of them have ties to love and romance, and we attach ourselves to them like barnacles, as if hearing and seeing perfect stories could make our own lives much better. We accept them as supplements for what we want in our own lives and sadly lack. Instead of finding and giving support and love to our friends and those close to us, we desperately cling to unreal echoes of what we really need and somehow cannot get.
After all, when there are so many other things to focus on than helping and loving other people who need it, how could you? Money, personal gratification, work, advancement, staying ahead of everyone else and making more money and more profits and more things than what everyone really needs. Our culture has made it so that love is a little thing by the wayside and everything else comes on top, or else you can’t succeed. It’s made it so that too many things inhibit what we feel translating to how we act.
Even the words we use have made a change in things. Words like “love” and “hate” are bandied around like snowballs in a field full of kids and new snow. Exaggeration makes it hard, I think, to say what we really mean when it’s something really big. “______? I love him,” is something you hear often that means nothing of the serious sort. “He’s awesome,” or “He’s so much fun,” or “He’s a good friend,” would fit the job just as well, but the amount of times you hear the first, at least with modern teens, equals the amount of times you hear the rest of them.
And the thing is, the topic is nothing to be thrown about so easily. Love is a real thing that so many people, even those that are considered “fortunate” and “happy”, lack. It’s something that people do crazy things for and are constantly hurting for, and are definitely not getting. Our culture isn’t helping. Ask yourself, “Am I really happy? Or am I lacking something? Could I use more love?” Chances are the answers to the last two questions will be a yes. Everyone could use more love.
So when you’re there on Valentine’s Day, surrounded by flowers, hearts, chocolate, love songs, and wishes, think about giving more love than you’re getting. Think about how everyone’s hurting for love just as much as you are, and how glad they’d be to get some. Think about how much you need and want it, and open up to the rest of the world. Everyone’s stuck inside his or her own mind watching everyone else. Anytime you make someone less alone is a beautiful thing.
And if you do have a special someone, show them. Maybe they’re just waiting for you to say it.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Success
(I have a point. Bear with me.)
Rain in the winter doesn’t fit, somehow. Washing it away—for what? Dry, yellow grass. Nothing to want in the slightest.
Why is it that what’s such a blessing in the summer is torture in the winter? In the summer we’re desperate for a drop of that life-giving liquid that’s so precious to break the endless heat. In the winter, we look upon it dully and wish that it were snow.
It’s the same with other things, I find. In the summer I’m desperate for something to happen because it’s so monotonous. However, in the winter when everything’s piling up, I’m desperate to get out. It’s never been as bad as this year. I don’t feel prepared for anything and if I could just let everything go I probably would.
How can something be such a blessing and such a curse? It’s supposed to be great to be involved and to be able to do so many things and have opportunities. Somehow, the reality doesn’t look anywhere near that good. Why do we do what we do?
They always give you answers. “College. Money. Support yourself.” But if you’re always working for something that never really comes…in college it’ll be “good grades, good job.” When you’re working it’ll be “Money, promotion.” When you get there, you don’t have time to enjoy it. Why do we force ourselves so hard? In another century will we start school at age 2 and have it all year long until we’re 24, then throw ourselves into a horribly competitive workplace? If that’s where this is going, what good will it do any of us?
But people will always say, “Well, if that’s what you need to do to succeed.” What is “succeeding” in this case? I think that succeeding should honestly be making a difference. It doesn’t matter how many degrees or money or anything you made if you didn’t make a difference for people and for the world. When you’re dead, will it say “S/he made a lot of money and spent it all on their house, got 10 degrees, and sat at home all day”, or will it say “S/he didn’t make a lot of money, but s/he was the greatest parent, community person, friend, and gave everything s/he had to help others”?
What is the point of forcing yourself to the brink in something that won’t matter in the course of the thing?
I think we really need to change this. In Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno, there is a section where the mysterious figure Mein Herr tells all about another planet where competitive examinations ran wild. “Teach them everything that’ll be on the examination and don’t bother about letting them learn anything else. It won’t be useful. As long as they can answer all the questions right, they’ll be good and successful and so will you as a teacher.” Will that be our goal? Just to learn everything on the examination and ignore everything else because the examination is what matters?
Don’t let this happen. Make it your quest to succeed because you know and you understand and you can apply it to the rest of your world, however small or large it is. I think that’s the measure of success (even if I meandered on the way to getting there!)
Rain in the winter doesn’t fit, somehow. Washing it away—for what? Dry, yellow grass. Nothing to want in the slightest.
Why is it that what’s such a blessing in the summer is torture in the winter? In the summer we’re desperate for a drop of that life-giving liquid that’s so precious to break the endless heat. In the winter, we look upon it dully and wish that it were snow.
It’s the same with other things, I find. In the summer I’m desperate for something to happen because it’s so monotonous. However, in the winter when everything’s piling up, I’m desperate to get out. It’s never been as bad as this year. I don’t feel prepared for anything and if I could just let everything go I probably would.
How can something be such a blessing and such a curse? It’s supposed to be great to be involved and to be able to do so many things and have opportunities. Somehow, the reality doesn’t look anywhere near that good. Why do we do what we do?
They always give you answers. “College. Money. Support yourself.” But if you’re always working for something that never really comes…in college it’ll be “good grades, good job.” When you’re working it’ll be “Money, promotion.” When you get there, you don’t have time to enjoy it. Why do we force ourselves so hard? In another century will we start school at age 2 and have it all year long until we’re 24, then throw ourselves into a horribly competitive workplace? If that’s where this is going, what good will it do any of us?
But people will always say, “Well, if that’s what you need to do to succeed.” What is “succeeding” in this case? I think that succeeding should honestly be making a difference. It doesn’t matter how many degrees or money or anything you made if you didn’t make a difference for people and for the world. When you’re dead, will it say “S/he made a lot of money and spent it all on their house, got 10 degrees, and sat at home all day”, or will it say “S/he didn’t make a lot of money, but s/he was the greatest parent, community person, friend, and gave everything s/he had to help others”?
What is the point of forcing yourself to the brink in something that won’t matter in the course of the thing?
I think we really need to change this. In Lewis Carroll’s Sylvie and Bruno, there is a section where the mysterious figure Mein Herr tells all about another planet where competitive examinations ran wild. “Teach them everything that’ll be on the examination and don’t bother about letting them learn anything else. It won’t be useful. As long as they can answer all the questions right, they’ll be good and successful and so will you as a teacher.” Will that be our goal? Just to learn everything on the examination and ignore everything else because the examination is what matters?
Don’t let this happen. Make it your quest to succeed because you know and you understand and you can apply it to the rest of your world, however small or large it is. I think that’s the measure of success (even if I meandered on the way to getting there!)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)