The thoughtful comments to the last
post here and at my main blog are forcing me to look further into this murky topic.
Having established that what my own particular guilt-harpy
keeps harping about is that I'm guilty of Squandering
My Gifts and Not
Living Up to My Potential the logical next question is:
what exactly are these gifts or potential which I'm supposedly
not living up to? Do they exist at all or are they yet another
mirage? Another false concept plugged into my brain by the
competitive, egocentric, celebrity-obsessed culture we live
in?
Well, you know, maybe.
But I don't think so. What I think, what I know gut-wise,
is that I really do have gifts I'm not using. It's not
vanity or arrogance to say so because gifts are gifts
and the real reason why the exasperating little
guilt-bug keeps buzzing around me is because it knows that
I know that I'm built to fly but settle for crawling - I
crawl very well but that ain't flying - and I'm designed
to burn bright but settle for flickering, a flicker flicker
here, a flicker there.
You may say ah, but that's what we
are: crawling, flickering creatures, doing our best against
all the odds. Well if that's what you'll say, I'll have to
disagree. Because what I really know down in my deepest
of deep guts is that many of us have a locked cellar full
of unused gifts - or maybe just one unused gift. It's not
a thing, not even a talent, but a degree of feeling. It
doesn't necessarily mean achievement or success in worldly
terms. It means being willing to risk flying, Icarus-like.
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1. What is the question to
which
love is the answer?
2. Is love a feeling or an
interaction?
3. Can love be felt
without a love-object?
4. If it's an interaction,
what's
the minimum number of participants?
5. Does love of one's self
feel the
same as love of an other?
6. For love to persist, is a
loving
response required?
7. Why are love and happiness
usually
considered to be a pair?
8. Why are love and
unhappiness so frequently seen together?
9. Can there be love without
joy?
Or joy without love?
10. What is this thing called
love?
Any answers?
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Well........"most sentences can be cut up at random and reassembled without too much loss of meaning or music..." Excuse me? Will you please step outside and repeat that? Help! I am being beaten up by an army of poets and other wordsmiths. Please! Look at the date: it was 1983. This is 2009 and I no longer agree with the rash statement I wrote then. I apologise. But the rest is okay, innit? MORE
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Talking to myself, so if it sounds like a lecture, that's probably what it is. The speaker in my head is often standing on a soap-box and has a pencil at the ready. For underlining. Just in case I miss the point.
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