At the shop next to me, loosely translated, a singer whines, “Your love is air to me. How can I live without air.”
Smarmy right?
Like Paul McCartney asked, where would we be without smarmy love songs? They infiltrate our lives and remind us where we’d be without love. The smarmy romantic concept with all its heart break and drama can block us from seeing love for what it truly is: a feeling of belonging, the truest super power as J B Pritzker, Governor of Illinois, USA recently called it. It creates and sustains life. When you look at it like that, the smarmy love songs seem more than appropriate.
And it’s smarmy but true. Love is air, whether you are with your partner for 50 years or 50 years partner free, love breathed life into you. It created you and sustains you still. And, it is the thing that will vanquish evil, in my story anyway. As I finish my third fantasy novel: the trilogy of Eco Woman, she and I have decided that love is the super power that overcomes all darkness. It’s the thing that stands up when everyone else sits down. It out supers everything else.
So, what do you love? What do you love about your life, right now? Exactly as it is. The sun on the curtain that falls over the chair, the full pink moon? Or the flower blooming in a crack on the road? Or the child that pulls it up to smell it. What do you love about this moment? What’s it worth to you to notice the present moment as it flies into the next moment. And then the next, never to be repeated. What do you love so much you’d change things like a habit or even an addiction to preserve it. Do you love yourself or that person or that thing, like freedom, peace, independence, whatever, enough to change a thing?
It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It can be something small. Would you sit still and notice for 5 minutes every day to bring yourself peace? Or bring the world peace if every one started? Are you really just too busy? Revolutions, personal, political, international, all start in baby steps. They take time and consistence. James Balwin puts in nicely: “The world is held together by the love and the passion of a very few people, it really is.” Perseverance in small details overthrows years of bad habits, bad leaders, bad results. It can ignite the love that is all around us. So step up and stand up for what you love. And play that smarmy love song.