Gardener

Love cont’d

Much of this lack of “young energy” is missing from our everyday actions and that has caused much of our civilization to decay and fall into the repetition of empty interactions. Our great cities, towns stares, prefectures and provinces, have become ignorant. We carry out actions with no substance or quality. It has gotten to the point of routine where we no longer are able to determine full from empty. The bar for quality has been deformed and is currently incomprehensible.

The reasons are many and interwoven through numerous themes. They are scattered across our current state of technology, economy, social structure, etc. In fact, I think it would probably take me the rest of my life to specifically research and summarize all. Also, I do not think that I am at a level to intelligently convey all of these factors, in a concise clear manner anyways.

Maybe one day though…

I am not always in agreement with those cult like self-improvement movements, but one thing they have constantly preached is that every moment in life is significant and it is. Significant for you, your loved ones, and people you don’t even know.

If you have read this far then you are probably thinking what does this all have to do with love?

Our quality-less interactions, that have become routine inevitably spreading to all of our relationships. New relationships often have what people term the honeymoon stage. To me, this is when people have that childlike eagerness and it often can be referred to as puppy love. In our romantic comedies, we often witness light humor of criticism for two people in a relationship acting like children. The term honeymoon also implies that it won’t last as if we know our relationships are doomed to become empty like we have. I have always found it odd that there really is no social consensus extending the honeymoon period indefinitely, would we not be better off? There seems just to be a lot of criticism, even though it is usually in a joking manner, for adults emulating children in their relationships. But it is that innocence that is precisely needed in a relationship. That childhood like behaviour might be some of the rawest and purist emotions we could possibly have.

Love cont’d…

I think we bump into one another each day and do not quite comprehend how much of an influence we have on each other. To me, we human beings are living breathing compilations of our experience. Some of these experiences, more often than not, are with other people. Every interaction, every word, every gesture with someone is an influential moment, but I don’t think we comprehend the importance of these everyday occurrences. Every day to every hour to every minute to ever second is precious. So many things in our life have become “status quo”. They occur in automatic fashion with little to no thought to them.  We no longer look at them as “special” enough to provide our unadulterated attention.

I always use the brushing of the teeth metaphor to help explain…

Do you remember the first time you brushed your teeth? Chances are you probably don’t, but I am sure most of us can admit that your younger self was probably very excited to start brushing his or her own teeth. I can remember when my mother stopped putting the toothpaste on the brush for me, I was ecstatic. This eventually led to me getting toothpaste everywhere, and I eventually tamed the wild beast that is the tube of toothpaste. Currently, brushing my teeth is just a necessary annoyance to me. I do it twice a day but never really want to do it, but that’s understandable I have done it every day of my life it was bound to become old fashion, right? If it wasn’t for the terrible consequences of breath and poor dental hygiene I would probably be much more inconsistent. Days where I am in a rush I always find myself wishing I didn’t have to brush my teeth.

 

Now juxtapose this frame of mind with the one of your younger self. My question to you is do you think we put in the same amount of effort in brushing our teeth, at both ages? Imagine your seven-year-old self and how happy they were with being able to have some accountability. This fueled an eagerness to put in as much effort as possible. Can you really admit to having that same eagerness?

I am not trying to convince you that your teeth are in terrible condition.

That vibrant energy of eagerness is what is missing from many of us trapped in adulthood.  And it is a shame as adulthood is the second last stop on the life train headed to death. By this stage in life, tasks completed for decades become completed through routine rather than that pure youthful motivation. Motivation is present but it is a much less potent than the emotion concocted within ourselves during our younger selves.

Dear Virtual Diary,

Maybe this will be part 1 of a long ramble…

When it comes to writing, I think the hardest thing to write about is love, death probably comes in at a close second.

The story, I am currently writing, will eventually get into Love and I am not sure how I will tackle it. I feel getting my thoughts out may help with writing about it later.
I want to start by saying I dislike the word Love very much. I think you’d agree that the feeling of Love cannot be, holistically speaking, well represented by one word alone. Love should always be a paragraph or an essay, not a four-letter-word. And yes, Love is certainly those things as well as a four letter-word but does anyone make an effort to say more…?

Of course, using a four-letter word is more convenient. Thus, my question is should Love be convenient?

Everywhere and anytime we say I Love you we should be reciting this so-called paragraph or essay. Think about the first time you told someone you loved them, was it special? Was it underwhelming? Now imagine instead of saying I Love you you handed that person a 1000-word paragraph on your feelings? (I know this is not very practical but is Love supposed to be practical?) Should we be able to just conveniently package it away in our emotional suit case underneath our sympathy and doubt? Or does it deserve its own entire storage facility?

Also, when I say essay I do not propose some kind of high-level Oxford PhD article were vocabulary used is known by few. Love can be conveyed easily by using regular everyday words, but there must be some kind of effort when conveying those words.

Don’t you think the receiver of the message of Love would value and gain a better understanding of how you feel? Today we use and abuse words, misusing them in situations that do not match their meaning and consequently cause confusion to others.