Love is a complex emotion and has tons of layers. It's hormones and pheromones when talking about romantic love and as it grows, so does your love, it becomes more complex and easier sometimes. We have to be careful when it becomes too easy, marriages fall apart when it's easy (as in you start to not make an effort or don't care enough).
Then you have the love of a family member, from your parents to your siblings, this love tends to be tested in different ways. It's a love that survives like, it survives arguments and blow outs, it makes it through family drama and weddings and birthdays. It survives deaths and it survives hate. It's hard for us to hate relatives no matter how cruel or unkind, no matter what they've done to us, we still manage some kind of love. I know that's not always the case, there are just some violations that love cannot survive in and they are tragic indeed. That's when loving is more damaging then cutting loose.
Then there is the love of a child...
Whether that child be your own or adopted, whether they be step-children or friends children, there is a love for kids that I can't explain. It really only comes together when you have your own child and then you understand the sickening platitudes. My love of my daughter cannot be measured and how I adore her smiles, her little kisses on my cheek and the sincerity of her hugs breaks my heart.
You love your friends and you love your country, or not. But love is far more complex than the short word lets on and I could go forever about love. But that's what I think of when I think of Valentine's day.
What is my wish? My wish is not for love. I just want some tolerance. Tolerance for those we disagree with and even tolerance for those who we fight against. We don't have to embrace their views nor even acknowledge them but we can tolerate the human beings by giving them some compassion and by refraining from hating them. It's about not letting them get under our skin and make us crazy. They aren't worth it!
It's easy to hate some of them, from the ones who lie, outright lie about marsh mice and call important spending "Wasteful". We know that some lied to line the pockets of a very few rich people by funding an illegal war. They call that patriotic not waste and they say it with a straight face and lie with a smile.
Tolerate doesn't mean we have to lie down and let them have their way with us. We don't have to embrace the lies and we don't have to let them steer our Country in the wrong direction. WE must speak out, just as some of our Representatives have done in the past few days. We have to fight with facts and reality but I want tolerance as well.
I know it's a lot to ask. But everyone of those people in Congress represent people who share their views and no matter how wrong they may be, they are still part of this Country and they are still our neighbors, our family and our friends.
I know that we can't afford tolerance that means giving up our ideals and I know that many have been disappointed with how Obama gave Republicans the benefit of the doubt but I'm still proud to call him MY President. I'm glad he gave them a chance to show their true colors and he will continue to tolerate them but hopefully has learned that he must control the message. I doubt President Obama will make the same mistake again. He rarely does.
So we don't have to love our fellow Republicans and we don't have to agree or even like but I do want to tolerate them without letting them run our Country into the ground. Millions voted for Obama but millions didn't. We are a Country divided and it will continue to be divided if we can't change the tone and language of politics, it turns a lot of people off.
How? I can't tell you, I really can't. But we have to tolerate those who don't agree with us if we are going to get any further than the same old political games.
Ultimately, I get the problem. This is a corporatized democracy that is run more by those who have the money and power. But our power is in allowing these bastards to dig their own graves. Obama gets it, he will have other chances and we have to keep handing Republicans their shovels. Tolerate them enough so they can prove themselves wrong.
That's my Valentines wish. That we win the messaging war with a smile and a hand out and that we prove what we all know all along, it's not about doing the right thing for Republicans in power, it's about keeping their power and helping the big people stay on top. Lets topple them with letting them show their true colors.
My Valentines wish is that we figure out how to do this. So be gentle with me.