Looking for Signs

 You can tell a lot about a person when you ask them what they want in life.  Some will rattle off a tangible list of things, even experiences, but honestly, there seems to be a cultural divide.  To want hope, peace, faith and love more than money in our culture seems to be unthinkable, that is until the unthinkable happens.

We pay people to solve things for us.  If we don't like how we look, we reshape ourselves through the hands of a skilled surgeon.  We buy our way through life, and in some very real ways we have friends based on what they possess instead of who they are.  This 'throwing money" at problems in order to 'solve' them doesn't seem to solve anything.  We try to make ourselves look better, but then that means that someone has to look 'worse' than we are.  The 'better' new me, because we have been taught to hate the 'old' (and younger) version of ourselves.  We want to go to the past or the future, but never enjoy the moment we have right now.  We want to leave this world, because another world will solve our problems.  We want to understand where we came from because we want an answer to why we are here because we cannot seem to deal with our inequalities and differences and continue to strive towards a sameness without realizing that we all just want to go in the directions of our dreams, ahhh, but the problem is WHAT to dream about.  We tend to forget that we all need each other, but the goal for many is not to need anyone because need is weakness.  The wealthy have seen in their own minds that they are the gods to be caretakers over humanity and the poor have also seen the wealthy as their gods and providers.  It's a codependent relationship.  The wealthy cannot care about death or famine because it would drive them insane.  They would weep in a nonstop fashion if they realized their ability to do something, but their friends ensure that there are no bleeding hearts amongst their group.  After all, we have continuously have been told that there have been too many of us.  On the other extreme, there are nations that brutalize the females, children, those of questionable sexual orientation, minorities, differing faiths and then call themselves a free people.  If freedom only exists for a segment of the population, can a nation ever call themselves free?  Economically, not even America can call herself a free nation.  Our voices are kept silent and we are left to figure out systems to try to 'make' ourselves.

We have our pursuits of happiness, and basically, this nation was founded on the principal that mankind is good, not evil.  The deepest desire within us all is to have the power to give kindness to each other.  We want to be trusting, as trusting as a child is of each other, but when you have a nation full of child abuse, rape, sexual violence, war and addictions; how is it possible to go to a place called 'happiness' when senses are distorted?  Not everyone is abused or the abuser.  No, but there is a huge void in many lives, and we try to fill that void with things.  Happiness is not a pursuit.  Happiness is a state of being.

The material world debate has been going on for quite sometime, a lot longer than I had perceived it.  There was a work written by D. H. Lawrence where the elder generation was criticizing the youth, "All they care about is money, so they know nothing about living."  I know I may have paraphrased it out of it's context,  but it was the most remarkable line of Lady Chatterley's Lover.  Here was a woman, who married well, in terms of her social and economic standing; but she had a business marriage and not one of love.

Only the poor know love?  I heard it said by many women, "The first time you marry, you marry for love.  The second time, is for money, but if you get it right the first time, you get both."  There is a bitterness about love that I cannot seem to understand because I still idealize love, even at my age.  Love isn't a 'thing' to be found.  I think where we have it wrong is that love is not an emotion, far from it.  Love is a state of being that is not based on economic give and take.  There isn't a balance sheet.  The problem is we talk about what love 'feels' like as though there is an emotional cue that this is what it is like to 'fall' in love.  We often mistake what true actions of love are.  Love is not an emotion, it is an action that cannot be repaid.  It is a display.  

I have to say that I have spent my entire life learning about love.  I will never fully comprehend love, but I feel that it is a noble quest.  Does love give way?  Does love allow us to grow if we try to control the actions of others?  Why has love been hated amongst groups that seem to profess the word and still fails to comprehend the depth of what that state of being is?  To be loved without loving is the most selfish kind of love there is.  Love is like water.  It is a tangible and intangible force.  It is the source of life.  Yet so many will say love doesn't exist.  

So what is the ideal?  Perhaps that would be to have the ability to love.  If you have the ability to love, you have the ability to live wisely.  Now if only we knew how to stop being so damn fearful of each other.