“How can I Deal with All this Shit?”
“HOW CAN I DEAL WITH ALL THIS SHIT?” this man said to me with tears on his face. Then he went on: “I just can’t take it anymore. Sometimes I wish that I was dead. There’s always something waiting right round every corner just to slug me from behind as I go past. So many nasty people. How am I supposed to deal with everything?” His forehead fell onto my shoulder as he sobbed his heart out desperately. I put my hand on the back of his neck and held it firmly, as if the power of my grip would give him the strength he needed. My mind was razor-sharp. There was only one thing I could say to him. For there is only ever one answer about how to stand in the face of even the worst hurricane (human or otherwise). “With love”, said I. “Just handle it with love. It’s the only way”. I felt him stiffen up at the mention of the word. He scoffed into my shoulder: “Love?” Then he drew back and looked me full in the eyes. His face was distorted with anger — puffy and red with his veins sticking out on his neck and temples. “I don’t even know what love is anymore. Everything’s bullshit!”
So… I readied myself and went in feet-first with these words: “Love is what happens when you abandon all preconceived ideas of what love is. Love is what happens when you get your shit straight instead of indulging it. Love is what happens when you abandon your religious, cultural and family rules, go right back to the drawing-board of your life and embrace your new-found grown-up babyhood. Love is what happens when you stop living in sentimentality (which most people mistake for love). Love is what happens when you no longer continually put yourself first. Love is what happens when you stop admiring yourself in the mirror. Love is what happens when you’re willing to risk everything — even your life — for what you know to be right and good and healthy for the universe. Love is what happens when you take off your mask and learn to face others without it. Love is what happens when you abandon resentment and bring a halt to hate. Love is what happens when you abandon jealousy or envy in life and live for service instead. Love is what happens when you stop trying to make a name for yourself and get rich. Love is what happens when you stop tolerating everything and begin to take a stand for what really matters. Love is what happens when you stop playing the victim and instead devote yourself to a life of service. Love is what happens when you stop dealing your entitlement card to everyone you meet. Love is what happens when you can live completely alone without any need for anyone else. Love it what happens when humility replaces self-absorption. Love is what happens when you can stand in other people’s shoes and know their heart (and pain and know just where their mind-blocks are and help them flow again). Love is what happens when you leave the past behind and live wholly in the present moment. Love is what happens when you begin to live passionately in the cause of truth instead of wallowing in a subjective soup of relativism. Love is what happens when you are utterly true to yourself (for then “it must follow, as the night follows day, you can not then be false to anyone”). Love is what happens when you are living in self-awareness and see all your shit, laugh at it and throw it into the garbage where it belongs. Love is what happens when you cease taking yourself so seriously. Love is what happens when you abandon all scheming and manipulation and let yourself be guided by the angels who stand at your right hand. Love is what happens when you learn the lost art of infinite patience. Love is what happens when you consciously choose no longer to be a slave to anything or anyone. Love is what happens when you purify your heart and then follow it gleefully till the day you die. Love is what happens when there is no room for anything else but love. (I could go on with this list forever). Love is also what happens in order to make all these things happen.”
All the while I had been speaking, this man was staring at me with his jaw dropped open. I think he hadn’t had time to take in everything that was said. (Which is why I’m writing it down here to the best of my remembrance). So I said to him: “Love isn’t what most people think it is. Love isn’t what most songs say it is. Love isn’t what most lovers think it is. Love is full of surprise and playfulness. Love is the only truly really deeply effective superglue. Music isn’t merely just the food of love; it IS love through and through. Love is the tears on my face as I say these things to you.”
And then we hugged like two stars (planets) in conjunction in the sky. For every particle or atom, muon, gluon, boson, neutron, hadron, quark, or positron in this and every universe is joined together at the hip and genuine love is the only answer ever given in this world to every urgent question why.
Now… to discover it… and abandon everything which isn’t it. A life’s lovely work…
© Alan Morrison, 2016
The Naked Troubadour 