Soul Food; Eating My Heart Out; The Love Post

“If music be the food of love, play on.” –William Shakespeare 

I’m sure many people’s automatic reactions to the titles of this post would be “Bleh, how mushy!” or “Gack, what is this overly sentimental bull-s***?” That would be MY automatic reaction anyway. I used to be quite mushy and overly sentimental though, so sometimes these lovey dovey subjects strike a chord in me...

Unable to cook with anyone this week, I instead spent two rainy days off watching the show “Call the Midwife” and making cheesecakes for work. Having weekdays off makes it difficult to meet with friends or plan anything fun for my free time. Thus, I started to get a bit down and out, feeling a pang of loneliness.“Call the Midwife” with its 1950’s love songs, mood music, and stories about birth and death may also have  triggered some emotional meltdown in me bringing up questions like “What is love?” “Have I loved fully, deeply, or enough?” and “Who loves me?” The last question may sound a bit self-centered, but sometimes it’s hard to remember how much the people around you care about you when they’re not actually around. So I called my mom since there’s no love like a mother’s love, but she thought I was irrationally freaking out and yelled at me to “Snap out of it” and “Grow up.” I could see why she thought that, seeing as I sounded like I was drowning in tears and snot.

Then I tried calling my close close friend, Marika, but got voicemail instead. Finally, I called a friend I met in Paris, who lives in Georgia- Hsiang-Ming. An architect by day and a musician by night, Hsiang-Ming has been someone I could talk to after months of no contact and feel like I only spoke with him yesterday.I really appreciated his patience and willingness to listen to me through all the tears and snot. I asked him about love and remembered how he had said he’d rather sacrifice his own life to save someone else’s, because he didn’t want to be selfish in thinking his life was more valuable than theirs. This may sound romantic, but he also meant he'd die to save friends and family. To my surprise, he even said he’d take a bullet (or a bus) for me. For some reason,that helped to calm me down. Knowing someone cares like that is like being embraced in a long, warm, all-enveloping hug, especially when one is feeling lonely and vulnerable.

But this also got me thinking about the “I’d die for you” kind of love. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that for anyone, not even for my parents. I guess if it came down to it, and I had to choose between saving a loved one’s life or mine, I’d sacrifice my own, but if I put myself in a life or death situation, my automatic reaction would probably be to dodge the bullet.

I decided to break my silence with Ken and called to ask for his opinion on love. From the little time I spent with him, I got the sense that he was a mixture of romantic and realistic. He loved falling in love, but he didn’t waste time pining. When I asked him, he responded first with a general answer: “There are many kinds of love.” Yes, but what’s his kind? “Wishing someone well, hoping the best for them, wanting them to succeed.” Ok, and what about the “I’d die for you” kind of love? “Well, if you sacrifice your life for one person, that’s selfish, because what about the other people you love who love you? How will they feel when you’re gone? How can you love them and help them when you're dead?” Then he quoted a song lyric: “I’d die for you. Don’t die for me, live for me.” I thought that was quite an interesting point. It also relieved my worry about not loving someone to the point of being able to die for them.

I feel I’ve loved deeply and fully. Sometimes I’m not given the chance to continue loving that way and sometimes when given the chance, I don’t love that way enough. All I can hope to do is keep on learning to love, working on loving, and appreciate being loved.

I spent the rest of my time off playing the ukulele and singing music that hit just the right emotional notes and eased my loneliness. I’ll leave you with one of the songs that has always brought me out of my stormy cloud moods:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Jz706sJMjg

If music be the cure for loneliness, play on…

Hang On, Little Tomatoes!