Is it an energy?
Is it the grace of God?
Is it a connection?
Is it an emotion?
Or is it something more abstract or simple?
Is it a verb?
Is it an action?
Is it a person? A being?
Is it chemical?
Is it spiritual?
Is it psychological?
Is it sexual?
It is Primal.
Love to me, is many things. This is not a blog about my love life or romance, per se. But I am going to speak to something I see."It is a word. What matters is the connection the word implies."- Ramachandra, Matrix Revolutions
For me it's everything. Love is an action or a verb, you can show love to someone you may never have met and may never see again. A wave, helping a lady load groceries, opening a door for someone at a mall. Love is connection between us all, it is the true version of friendship, brotherhood (or sisterhood) and romance. It is chemical, it is programmed into us physically as much as it spiritually, we can feel it, we feel it's essence in sexuality or just that harm feeling of friendship.
For me Love is an energy that encompasses and engulfs and moves through every aspect of the universe. There are channels, man made channels, through which love does meet potential, where people can't be truly in contact with each other. Yet, somehow, continents and even the world apart, love reaches though and breaks those barriers.
[love rant, end]
I mean we live in a world where most of time of our time in contact with any given person is spent by texting, e-mailing, text chatting. Other exceptions and myself not included, I hate texting, lol. It not a real form of communication, there as aspect of the human condition that just don't make it. It's hard to verbalize meaning, how much hard then is it to textualize feeling? Even through videochat or Phone calls not everything transfers.
We're beings that interact with more than text, words, tones, visual cues.
There is something about physically communicating with someone that makes things clearer. I'm awkward on the phone, I stutter, I ramble. Even in a video call I have these weird things that poke at my brain, really just a minor case of technophobia hidden under my idealistic devotion to technology.
I mean, yes, I am a bit awkward in person and I forget my wording like three seconds after I think of it, but that's because I'm so distracted by other things to notice. Like body language and the conversations that spread outside of your little group and continue to flicker other's like those pixals in John Conway's Game of Life. (Google Search: Game of Life)
But in person, I am able to understand people better, I don't need to ask for explicitness as I do in texting. I can use my hands, I talk with my hands so much. I am far more charismatic in person than I am in a video call, I can read people's shallowest emotions like a book and worry more about what really matters. Like Frustrations, life issues, the world cup.
One of the best examples I can give is body language. It explains so much that words can't even embody. I mean, I can understand what love or friendship is through the language I can feel with hands on her hips, my head against hers better than I can explain how check for leaking oil on sedan.
When you're talking, you just concenter a high energy situation a whole faster than you can when your more focused on trying to the people who aren't even before you.
I mean, I'm gun ho for technology. I talk to my friend Eleshia over text most days. My friendship with Caeleigh is currently exclusively on video call and youtube communion. My friends Jamie and Alice I have only spoken live with through skype calls. I use blogging to speak to the world (or at least those who are interested).
However, it's a pure communication method when you can reach out and touch someone. It's simply indescribably, like love.
That's what I think love is.
You can't tell me that just because you hate someone doesn't mean that you're not exchanging some love with them. Hate is nothing more than agitated love. it's when you love someone so much, but there is something about them or among them that you don't understand or you really just can't handle and you want them to change. If you didn't love them then you just wouldn't care.
That's why walking in a crowd of people there is minimal communication. Just minor body language to avoid bumping into each other or let people through. (which is arguably love as a verb)
Yet, I have been to spiritual gatherings where hundreds of people are gathered that may have never met before. Yet in those moments of worship through music, speech or pray there is this energetic connection. There is communication that transfers in body language, the verbal, the chemical energy and something more. The touch of held hands in a prayer. The hug given between songs at a concert. The nudge against your handheld shoulder quietly in lesson. The nudges during a benediction. The joy and grace of the presence and communion. The intectual deliberation through a lesson. The joyous singing of even a mediocre choir and a community. The singing voices of like seventy youth groups singing a cappella with a rock band gone accoustic is one of the most beautiful things I've heard. The sight of a devoted CCYM group doing a sketch of a girl struggling with temptation then being protected by Jesus from the persuaders. (Google: Lifehouse Everthing. Likely bring that up again next time)
If you're on my Actual Blog you should see a Youtube video of the Everything Sketch, because I feel like sharing. It really intense and really cool and the first time I saw it was live at a United Methodist Youth gathering in Virginia. It's really powerful to watch it in video, but it takes on new meaning when you actually watch it live, it's something... indescribable. If you have no interest in such things, don't watch it. lol
I think that's what drives me to Philosophy, really. I want to be a Pastor and someone capable of philosophizing things to teach, lead and/or help others. All I want to do is help others.
But the one thing I really yearn for my own gain is understanding. I want to understand the indescribable, philosophize the things that confound me to the core, to understand the human condition or at least what of it I perceive, so I can love with less discrimination that I already do, to truly grasp the grace of God and understand it to the extent that through true, pure communication I can express it to the people I love.
To wrap up things.
There's something pure about being able shake someone's hand or hugging my friends when I see them. About the moment when Larry blows everyone's mind because of the cogitation he did in his corner while we rambled on. About those glances between Shane and I in a group, Eleshia and I during a lesson or Misti and I to an offhanded reference. Those moments of laughter with Emma and me, when you look upon a smile that could cure cancer in bottled form. About standing with Emma, when we're holding each other close and just talking. About fist bumps to abstract moments that link obscurely to almost literal metaphors. About a body of people in prayer.
Being with people, no matter who it is, is one of my favourite things. You could put me to dinner with a someone I can't stand to hear talk, but I bet you my new shoes I would walk away from that table with at least a hell of a debate to remember.
But again. Technology is incredible. It is the future.
In some undecided amount of months I will meet one of my finest friends for the first time in person. I communicated with people all over the world. I write a blog to the world who listens to me.
The future is bright, with connectivity. But it will only get brighter, because true communication can not vanish.
Rant over.
Shalom,
Brent Matthew Lillard.
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