WHEN A GREATER NUMBER OF FOLKS THAN YOU EVER THOUGHT...OH WHATEVER...
Friday, November 6, 2020
Running 5 miles the other day (25 lbs down, thanks) in these really cool support socks (did I just write that?) I was listening to Stevie Wonder’s "Love’s In Need Of Love Today” and in the unbelievably musical outro he says to the band:
“Bring it down a little
‘Cause love is very peaceful
So bring it down a little”
…and I heard myself saying out loud over these earbuds, “Bullshit, Steveland. Love is hard as hell so you need to turn that shid up!”
And I recall some great someone wrote how better off we’d all be “if we loved each other a little less and respected each other a little more”. I’m not sure I’m buying that either. At least not this afternoon. Or for a while. Maybe.
Am I still that immature at 60+ in support socks that I still struggle with loving those that believe so differently from me? Really?
Christian friends, Buddhist friends tell me - is that the key to this thing? Not that we just outright love no questions asked, but that we have to work like all get-out to love and that *that* itself is the meaning of this journey? Is that it? Did I just ask you the meaning of life? Sorry...
But tell me, when then can I stop kicking myself for my daily failure at pulling off this insurmountable task? My joy in the face of others has eternally been my ticket to my personal survival in my race-bruised, uncertainty-plagued, violence-riddled early world. How do I go on loving with the late-life realization that many would choose to not? Didn’t I know those folks were out there? How friggin immature is that?
I quote my friend Andy. She says part of her fix is that she has simply “just grown tired of my own despair”. Thanks, girl. Maybe that is indeed step one to loving yourself first, which surely has to be the laid bedrock foundation before you go loving everybody else.
And accepting these socks.
xovg
“Bring it down a little
‘Cause love is very peaceful
So bring it down a little”
…and I heard myself saying out loud over these earbuds, “Bullshit, Steveland. Love is hard as hell so you need to turn that shid up!”
And I recall some great someone wrote how better off we’d all be “if we loved each other a little less and respected each other a little more”. I’m not sure I’m buying that either. At least not this afternoon. Or for a while. Maybe.
Am I still that immature at 60+ in support socks that I still struggle with loving those that believe so differently from me? Really?
Christian friends, Buddhist friends tell me - is that the key to this thing? Not that we just outright love no questions asked, but that we have to work like all get-out to love and that *that* itself is the meaning of this journey? Is that it? Did I just ask you the meaning of life? Sorry...
But tell me, when then can I stop kicking myself for my daily failure at pulling off this insurmountable task? My joy in the face of others has eternally been my ticket to my personal survival in my race-bruised, uncertainty-plagued, violence-riddled early world. How do I go on loving with the late-life realization that many would choose to not? Didn’t I know those folks were out there? How friggin immature is that?
I quote my friend Andy. She says part of her fix is that she has simply “just grown tired of my own despair”. Thanks, girl. Maybe that is indeed step one to loving yourself first, which surely has to be the laid bedrock foundation before you go loving everybody else.
And accepting these socks.
xovg