Karaoke On The River #1

I read Michael's hub today here and I got some ideas.  The question was asked "what is Love?"

It just so happens it's been my lifelong quest to find out.

Quote: “Love is a free bird. It is like a timid child. Severity gives it fear. It is the truth that guides it on the road to a pure heart.”

I sing love songs at the karaoke club I go to. Sometimes nightly. Does that make me an expert on what love is? Certainly not! However, I do get to watch the nightly selection of songs the others will pick out, and I sometimes base my selection on what they've chosen. The fact is there's more conflict or blues tunes out there than there is of the happy, fulfilled in the love dept. kind of tunes. It appears, we are all in the same boat.

Songs like "I shaved my legs for this" or "shoot me with your best shot" or "Crazy" these are popular. Some songs are not about love at all, like the lyrics "Earl had to die," or "I keyed his car, so he'll not cheat on the next girl."

Well, where I go every night, it gets you to thinking about love for sure. What it is, what it's not. I think, like Springsteen says, "Everybody Has a Hungry Heart." Love can be like this tune, "This Ain't, no this ain't NO thinking thing." Or, if you prefer, love can be A Sunday Kind of Love."

Note though, that the lyrics in A Sunday Kind of Love, is that the singer is saying that's what she wants. It never said she actually got it!

So love tunes are mostly about desire. Since we got enough long faces in the crowd, I decided I would sing mostly up tunes, as I like to pick something with a good dance beat and watch them dance. It loosens up the place. Aside from that I can do the blues as good as anyone else, like Bird on A Wire by Leonard Cohen. It's about someone who tried in their own way, to be free.

Which is what I think love is. You give the other freedom to be who they are, no expectations on their behavior or mode of expression. It would an unconditional love in that case. However, there is a rule of thumb to go by, even though it's unconditional. If someone's belief system is injuring them in some way, it's also going to injure anyone who is close to them, so you can love someone very deeply, and at the same time, you could have this conflict with their behavior, which could build up to the point where the relationship begins to drain your energy as you can't fix anyone else, but you can fix your own self, to hit the road. There's 50 ways to leave your lover you know.

It's better to jump on the bus Gus, then say, key his car or kill Earl.

There's this tune I like by Vince Gills, where he says you only get to keep what you give away. He's talking from a spiritual plateau. It is my believe when we die, we take the love with us, and all the rest can go, well, where the sun doesn't shine. Life is not worth living without some kind of love being felt in that life, for someone. If something about love was learned, it was a successful life and makes way for an even more successful life, if you do come back.

Many don't particularly want another Earth life. I know the feeling. You don't have to come back. Just thought I'd throw that in.

Talking about expectations and how the beloved may appear impetuous, inconsistent, these are trivial concerns in a relationship. After studying A Course In Miracles, I can see we all want the same thing; we are either asking for love, or we are delivering love; if you are asking for love, you're saying you don't have love.

First rule is in the Gibran teachings, if love finds you worthy, you don't have to seek it, it will find you. I really believe that. That's why I'm always checking to see it I am worthy of love. And if I am, I sometimes wonder what I have to offer another person.

It could be they would get sick and tired of me being so cheerful all the time. Well, they might think I'm a phoney. But I love myself first. I've learned to be selfish that way, then if I have any spare love left over, I'll sing it to everybody and spread it around. It always comes back to me whatever I've put out.

Keeps me alive. I know I'm in the right place. I'm currently interviewing people who have been married 20 to 60 years and beyond. I hope to write a book on relationships before I die, what makes people hang in there, what makes them up and leave. Sometimes it's a power control issue and that's where it can get downright bloody and I watch forensics on TV and wonder how it got to that sad finish, when it would have been just as easy to walk. But not everyone values a human life, and people seem to fall out of love as easy as they fall in love.

So maybe we're talking about degrees of this stuff called love? Let's get back to feeling like a free spirit. If you free someone, you heal them. Love, in it's highest form is a healing thing.

Real Love produces a third entity. Not necessarily a child, the relationship becomes an example for the rest of us. The example is the third entity. Yet it's also wrong, at least for me, to sacrifice myself on the altar of love. If it's not working, if it's limiting you in some way, or injuring you, or draining you, then sometimes it's best to walk, so you can clear your head, and get the overview on what just happened to your battered heart. Because, in some way, you let it happen, and you can change your self. You cannot change another. That's called nagging. Nagging does not work. I learned alot about special relationships versus Holy relationships in ACIM.

The special relationship is what most of us have. It is where you pick out someone and say to yourself, this is the one and only for me. I must have this person. So then you are making that person special in your mind. You don't even know them, yet you've already decided they are the only one for you.

Where the Holy relationship is what we are after. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the couples I interview always had a blissful union, but maybe they made a rule to be honest with each other, and never go to bed angry, without one or the other apologizing and clearing the air. That's what Chris and Joe told me, was their fundamental rule. So I say, they have an example for me that I can pass on in my book. Honesty in a relationship is another subject entirely. Sometimes honesty doesn't even come up on the table because there's not enough communication to get to the honesty part. It's all emotional stuff instead.

They should make the study of relationships mandatory before graduating high school, my opinion. Most of my relationships were special ones in which they turned into holy ones years down the line after I'd sorted things out.

I had one relationship which started out holy and then we flubbed it up good after the kids came, now he's on the other side, and the thing has turned holy again, because remember, when someone dies, all you can remember is the love part, and you suddenly get very grateful that you even had a relationship, when you look around at all the people searching for love.

Then you sing a new song, like Hello Young Lovers, my wishes go with you tonight, I had a love of my own!" They love you for it, because our dreams of being fulfilled in love is such a strong primal drive.

Take a little, give a little, and learn the value of forgiveness is my best advice at this juncture of life, and it do seems, as we get older we do forgive almost automatically, things that would have irritated us greatly in our youth, and forgiveness paves the way for love to grow.

Be gentle with others, for you never know how many times their heart may have been broken. Another thought comes, to be kind to others, as it could be an angel in disguise, testing you, and if you have any spare love in your pocket, giving out with it, you can never lose it, as love is like a boomarang.