Monday, February 25, 2013
Make Someone Happy
Fame if you win it, comes and goes in a minute.
Where's the real stuff in life to cling to
Love is the answer, Someone to love is the answer.
Make Somone Happy / Styne, Comden and Greene.
Where is the real stuff in life to cling to? I have been hearing this tune for the past week in the cavern of my heart, where there are a surprising number of songs from my parent's generation. I can't argue with the first line. It's the third that is giving me some trouble. Let me paraphrase
Love if you win it, comes and goes in a minute.. where's..... You get the point. Love particularly the Love that was being promoted here, is conditional. As a veteran of more than one marriage I can certainly endorse that. It comes and it goes. Or at my age it mostly does neither, but that is another story, and if it ain't the real stuff in life to cling to...then I guess it doesn't matter at this point.
So what is the real stuff in live to cling to? Well if we are on the right track at all, then I think we can say Love that lasts. And if it really lasts, and it doesn't check every few minutes whether you turned into an asshole, then I would call that love unconditional.
In this life, I have only seen this approached not by brotherly or otherly love, but by motherly love. Even the most unsavory characters can often take comfort in the fact that their mother loves them. But it is not really something you control, Is it? I mean your mother loves you or she doesn't. Then there is the transgender angle. A number of transgender people that i have known have experienced traumatic interactions with their parents when they came out to them. This I think is more likely with their fathers than their mothers from my limited sample, and in my own case, my mother and father never knew about my gender issues during their lifetimes. Which points to the other issue with motherly love. Presumably it ends when your mother dies.
I have been of course saving the obvious answer for last. Unconditional Love... The Love of God.
But not so fast. I have been recently mulling over my old Catholic roots, And I can assure you that in that tradition .... well let me sing it for you....
God's Love if you win it comes and goes in a minute... That is what the concept of mortal sin, and mortal sin's old friend damnation is all about. Is it not.
And so I am left still with the unanswered question.
Where is the real stuff in life to cling to?
I am not getting any younger or smarter, so there is a certain urgency to the question.
Should I announce a prize for the best answer?
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