Luv Tings A Gwan

By now, you’ll already know my feelings on holidays and commemoration days alike. You’ll already know that I feel like Birthdays are actually Mother’s Days and Workers’ Days are in fact Freedom Days and New Years are, well…old.

Yet for the Thinker, it can’t be helped but to use these days as an excuse to reflect. So I reflect on Love.

I reflect on how we don’t have a consensus on its definition save the old ‘it’s so real’ rhetoric and the Oxfords. Yet we all think we know enough about it to prophesy. Today my definition of Love is limited to the context of Romance; Sexuality.

For time, I have been told what I should expect in Love. From an early age, most times without warning, regard or consent, I was taught about ‘Forever After’ and ‘The Eve to my Adam’ and who could ever forget the popular Elevator Sign-Lingo ‘You Complete Me’. In time I have had to systemically purge many of these teachings from my achy-breaky and redefine some core fundamentals that govern my new (though still evolving) view of Love.

Don’t get it contwist, {confused or twisted}, I am a believer in Real Love. Just not the kind on sale right now off the impromptu stand at the butchers…

Thanks to my firsts; First Kiss, First Heartbreak, First Love and First True Love, all in that order; I am able to remodel my view of Love. It is in reflecting on these firsts that I become that much more convinced of the following;

A fine line exists between Obsession, Addiction and Real Love. Knowing which one of the three you’re experiencing at any given point is being able to answer honestly, “Would I be a better version of me without this?” A degree of rehabilitation might be required to see you safely into the kind of territory you need to be to answer this question, cos invariably the acts of a Romeo or a Juliet are indistinguishable to those of a raving lunatic who fiends that crack!

An inexplicable link exists between Love, Sex and The Ego. This is especially true for us dudes. Trying to figure it out is pointless, but being able to recognize how real the link is and its impact on our actions in Love is paramount. This is the part where Real Love takes over and you sit shotgun and watch as your heart races the tracks of emotion. It can be quite an exhilarating ride.

Most of us spend lifetimes chasing love; that is searching and finding it. Few of us spend nearly as much time nurturing love. Real Love is nurtured. There really is no other way to attaining it. It’s not had at first sight, or earned over time…it is nurtured. This nurturing is a choice thing.

Easy now, I’m not saying you choose who you love. Don’t get it contwist. I’m saying you choose which love to nurture and when… even to the point of it becoming Real.

I’m fascinated at the surrender love demands. Because it is such a choice thing, only you can decide to give yourself off to love. I’m reminded of The Perfect Gift from God; Free Will. This is the expression of Real Love; in its surrender. Funny how most of us want someone to love or love us, but few of us allow ourselves to love. The older you get and the more clued up you become in the ways of love, the scarier the prospect of surrender seems.

Finally, the organic nature of loving opens us up to the prospect of Unconditional Love; one even more scary than surrender. The sheer magnitude of an unconditional love, one with no quid pro quo, no expectations or demands is unfathomable for most of us raised on ‘Forever’ and ‘Complete Me’. Our love is contractual in its terms yet comes with a voetstoots clause. Real Love can actually be that sometimes; real. This means everything you learn, every rule you have, every sure thing in you, means nothing! In the face of Unconditional Love No Rules apply…

But what do I know. I’m just a rapper dude trying to decide whether to do the Anti-Valentines Throw Down or the Cupid’s Arrow Bow n Tie event! Still, it’s worth thinking about, no?

Live Now