Love Really Is All Around

I am listening to Eddy Grant and the song "Gimme Hope Jo'Anna" is playing. This song will always remind me of my grandfather. How wonderful that we can have certain songs that take us back to times both sad and wonderful. Emotions are a very vital part of who we are as human beings in a world that suffers so much, and yet has so much love within it. Hear me out: think about the movie Love Actually, and the opening scenes where people in an airport are hugging their loved ones at the arrivals gate at Heathrow. Hugh Grant in his delightful voice tells us that: Love actually... is all around! How true! Its difficult to see this when we are having a bad day, or something traumatic has happened. Its difficult to see this when we are aware of natural disasters in India, or genocide in Rwanda, or a massive traffic accident. When we lose someone, or break up with our beloved, the world is anything but full of love. Yet it is! This is a fact. As much as a fact as the notion that the waves will always crash on the shore, and the clouds will appear in the sky, and the politicians will lie to each other in Parliament. There will always be love as long as there are human beings.

I have been accused of being quite the pessimist, and this is quite true in many cases, and I am not the greatest believer in the human race when it comes to its treatment of the planet and its natural resources and its animal inhabitants. However love is something that very few people actually don't possess. Even the coldest and deadliest of killers have a love for something or someone, and as disturbing as this is, it is also a very masked blessing. Imagine a world without love? Impossible? Even the most apocalyptic of films and novels cannot completely remove the act and feeling of love. Indifference and coldness are not attributes that can completely dissolve love.

Surely it is not difficult to find love in all aspects of our lives. In the songs we listen to, the meals we eat, the trees we climb, the newspapers we read? Without love there would be no heartbreak and no loss. There would be no loneliness, or fear, or sadness. We know there is love when these feelings are felt. We all know the idea that a negative cannot occur without the initial presence of a positive, and therefore my topic is not original in any shape, way or form. The media for example surrounds us with great love stories and romances all the time, and this is not necessarily in the form of two human beings. Here's my theory:

We find love when we see aid workers in foreign countries bringing food and relief to victims of a natural disaster or civil war. We find love in the rescuing of birds and sea-life that have been victims of the oil spill in the Gulf. People risk their own lives daily in order to save other inhabitants of the planet. Its amazing! We read about these people and you can't help but feel a sense of love. In fact the mere fact that you are reading a newspaper can be linked back to some sort of feeling of love. Perhaps the idea for the particular newspaper may not have come about due to a feeling of love, but there sure as damn must have been at least one person who wrote an article with a feeling of love. Yes of course we are not always going to love what we do, but sometimes going into something with a sense of purpose and compassion can change everything about how we exist.

I have learnt that it is never good for me to write when I am angry, because I will inevitably say things and write things that I will regret. Though sometimes emotions such as anger and sadness are the perfect incidences where we can reconsider why and how we got to that particular state of mind. I won't necessarily share these 'emotional rantings' with the rest of the world, but just the act of writing for yourself can be very redeeming and healing.

I really wanted this piece to go somewhere, but it seems to have gone off course, but that's okay. You get where I'm trying to be - hopefully!