I listen to the radio quite a lot, these days, mostly Ska - great radio station for that is Bob's Ska Radio - and I like Music Night on BBC4. Last night they had on the soul queens and that reminded me of my teenage years when Soul Music first came up. That music helped me get through the emotional roller coaster of feelings which were so powerful at that time. It also reminded me of how crazy that time is.
And the craziest emotion we have is love. It can feel like heaven and like hell - even at the same time! Listening to the lyrics of these "Love Songs", also leads to a reflection on that time and other times when I "fell in love". And it is a falling!
Why do I say that? Well, just look around you and, depending on your age, what you'll find is the debris of "love". Broken homes, divorced parents, children suffering abusive parents, single parents, children in homes, mental anguish - the list goes on. I appreciate that there are some happy relationships that have survived a lot of years, but even there, I question the surface show.
I suspect that almost everyone would agree that love certainly doesn't remain the way it started. So why not?
Well - and here the illusion is fully at work - the key reason is because we link two things together, neither of which work, the most powerful of which is: EXPECTATIONS! Ugh! Along with these powerful emotions, come a whole raft full of expectations, the worst of which is that that powerful overwhelming feeling of first love will last like that forever! There is very little that is not crazy about that. Nobody lasts forever, nothing lasts forever, but this is supposed to last forever - all the songs say so, so it must be so.
Experience shows that our expectations are false, so why do we do it? Why do we believe that this is the right person, this time it's the real thing, when all experience tells you that isn't possible?
Possible it's linked to the second truly crazy belief that people have: this emotion I'm feeling is coming from the outside, from the other person! And yet, we know that all emotions and feelings only occur within us! So why do we use such phrases as "you make me feel...", "I feel like this because of you", etc. That's what fills the other kind of love song: the ones where s/he left me and now I feel so terrible, because you did all this to me.
There are times when it seems to me that the whole music industry keeps perpetuating the myth of eternal love followed by disastrous break up. What is going on?
To me, that we have a need to feel love is abundantly clear, which is why so much effort goes into this. But it's wrong effort, if it's directed to the outside. Love - like all feelings - is inside of each person, along with every other emotion. So why don't we focus on that source. It's always there and never let's you down. Isn't that what we're after?
There is so much more to say, but I'm going to have some time off, today :-)
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