I'm in Love With a Love Song

My poor sister has had to listen to me blab for the last month about how much I love Katy Perry's new song. Yes, Katy Perry.

Our society, nay, mankind is performance driven.  Our own preferences and prejudices for an individual are formed based on their actions and behaviors.  We deem one another worthy of our trust, friendship, love based on their outward conduct.

What if, despite your outward conduct, no matter what you did, what you said; even further with what you thought and what you felt, you were wholly accepted and loved unconditionally.  Well, you are.  And this is why I'm in love with Katy Perry's song 'Unconditionally'.  (Go ahead and play it along on YouTube while you read further on.)

Oh, no did I get to close
Oh, did I almost see
What's really on the inside
All your insecurities
All the dirty laundry
Never made me blink one time

Unconditional, Unconditionally
I will love you unconditionally
There is no fear now
Let go and just be free
I will love you unconditionally

So, come just as you are to me
Don't need apologies
Know that you are worthy
I'll take your bad days with your good
Walk through the storm I would
Do it all because I love you
I love you

So open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart and just let it begin
Open up your heart

Acceptance is the key to be truly free

I must say, I'm pretty impressed with (the possibility of the depth of) this song.  It could just be another song of someone declaring their love for their sweetheart.  But let's get real. We all know that kind of love does not last.  We've all seen proclamations of forever and watched them burn to the ground.  Why?  Because that is the love that is based on performance.  

Picture a different love*.  One you do not have to earn.  (Trying to earn love is exhausting and enslaving.) One where you do not have to hide, do not have to fear.  How freeing is that type of love?!  How secure and how much depth to that love?  Where despite and in spite of your actions, thoughts, attitude, behavior; despite your own lack of love and in spite of you; you were always loved.  I'm sorry, that is the wrong verb tense.  In spite of you, you are always loved.  Only, you are searching for that love in all the wrong places.



*(Denotes a tangent I did want to distract from my current point) I really wish our language had different words for love instead of only one.  I know there are at least two different 'loves'.  Language and culture are closely related.  What does this say of our culture if we cannot distinguish in our language the different loves?



 And yes, I am leaving it all right here. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Stained Glass

"Our stained glass means nothing without light."   It's a lyric by Sleeping at Last from the song "Sight" that has been running through my mind over and over again for weeks now.   It is a powerful image.   I have always been mesmerized by stained glass windows.  I remember sitting in my grandparents' Lutheran church as a child contemplating the scenes they depicted of Christ.  But at night without the light, they lose their spell.   In darkness, they become nothing.    In this advent season, remember the Christ who came as light of the world.  Remember our lives are nothing without this Light.  Soak in the beauty of these stained glass windows  as the light beams through.  May our lives be just as beautiful as we allow the Light to shine within and through us. 
Read more

Stationary

I have the strong desire to write a new post.  I'm not sure why.  I've been uninterested in doing so for over a year now.  But tonight with only one hand, I'm feeling enough of an urge to lead me to plunk at the individual letters on the keyboard at a rate half of what I'm used to in order to create this.  While doing so, I've opened Pandora.  I've not listened to music on Pandora for over two years now.  Upon opening, I looked through the 20+ stations I'd created in the span of six or seven years and I recalled the various times in my life.  The times that lead me to create these stations because the music somehow reflected an emotion I felt or an experience I had or I simply delighted in the particular style of organization in the sounds.  I have found these small paths that I'd created years before and I allowed myself to travel down some of them, to remember these times in my life.  Music is powerful and I can tell this is going to be a ...
Read more

Signs

My mom and youngest sister came to visit me in Chicago just over a week ago.  Being from Idaho, we don't typically walk to places there.  It's too far- people (apparently) like their wide open space.  While out and about, I tried to give them landmarks they could set their eyes on so they would know how far we had left to go. My sister and I set out to pick up our Thai take-out.  As we came to an intersection, I told her the place was just past Pizza Hut.  Confused, she searched around for the Pizza Hut.  I had to tell her it was the building literally across the intersection, right in front of us.  As we laughed about how obvious it was, she told me she had been looking for the sign and not the actual building.  And I made a comment about how that could be used for a good analogy... Sometimes we look for the signs all around when the landmark is right in front of us. or even Sometimes we're searching for the sign pointing to the sight show...
Read more