Tuesday, February 13, 2007

crush (krŭsh); v. crushed, crush·ing, crush·es

I seem to pick up a few things in my travels, and there are a few things that seem to be almost consistently common; i.e. people bemoaning a lack of romance in their lives (refer to below), as well as another weird phenomena, an incredible proportion of people maintaining or cultivating ‘crushes’

If I think back over the last couple of years, I can’t actually recall personally maintaining unresolved crushes for an extended period of time; the closest I could possibly relate to one over that period would be coming out of an encounter with someone, wondering why it was so, so fun, blog about it; as soon as I’d hit the “Publish” button, I’d then read over my literary piece, pat myself on the back, and then just get on with the rest of my life…

Maybe it was cuz I was blessed with incredibly close and intense friendship groups (blog squad, resies) that I never felt a dearth of relationship in the brief periods of singleness, I never really felt that I was missing anything in particular. You can read through my previous posts, I think I’m actually pretty consistent in that too, and not just spouting this off now…

Chasing God, and jumping into all the bizarre places He had for me was simply exhilarating; and together with Mikey, my family and misc friends, I really found myself lacking in nothing, life was amazingly rich

Which is why everytime I hear of unresolved (or unresolving) ‘crushes’, I have to admit, I’ve always failed to understand why they’re there…

Is it because people aren’t blessed with a similar caliber of friends? Is it because we’re subliminally indoctrinated that we need a partner to make us whole?

What confuses me even more is the sheer volume of those people with crushes that are waiting for that someone to come into their lives to share their love with, when there is an entire world going largely unloved by us; are we loving the poor, the neglected, those at the margins, wherever that may be in your context?

    Do we walk by the beggars outside the Maccas, cnr of Swanston/Lonsdale?

    Do we only concern ourselves with the friends we “like”, or are like “us”?

    Do we really care about our friends, or are they just social circles for our own convenience?

    Do we say me first, and then wonder why someone isn’t saying you first?

    Are we still waiting for God to “gift” us with that one person, and only then we’ll take that risk to “love” someone?

Loving people, is the most dangerous, most painful and the greatest thing we can ever do; and the very nature of love, is that it’s not what we can get, but what we give; exercise your heart, by making your life a natural orientation of love to the people around you in ALL contexts, now!!

Spiritual warfare isn't going to work as one prayer you say in six months that coincides with the exam you're sitting in five minutes, having an exquisite upper torso isn't something that just appears once it's summer and love isn't something you'll just be able to turn on; it'll come out, like the torso, weird, ineffective and... fat??? :P Rather than poignant, touching, meaningful and relevant.

Exercise your heart, so when that one person someday enters your world, and you wake up to find yourself in relationship, you can then love that person with a big, strong heart :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey Natey...thank you for being honest and brave enough to bring up touchy issues. You've given me loads to chew on... Guess we all need a smack on the back of our heads from time to time from those who's got theirs screwed on properly..

iddis said...

I actually really like that post Nate...especially the way you define love...it's how I look at it. I'm glad to hear that there's a male in the world that actually looks at it that way too!

Freakatronic said...

Gah!! An arrow?! How did this appear in my chest? And from whence did it strike me?! I want so badly to cut you down Natey!
I'd tell you, "Now while other people might congratulate you on your positive outlook, may I point out that you're never single. Ever. And people clamour for your time. So I guess you're never alone, either. What do you really know?"
I would. But...you've got a point. I don't give half a sh!t about anyone. Add to that the fact that I'm a fantastic coward. Rahaha! Why am I alone again? I just answered that...

Anonymous said...

*applause* Mikey you got Natey there!

Thanks for writing the blog. You can't rationalise crushes logically. Just like you can't rationalise love. You just continue to hope...

And maybe you're right about the Hollywood theory. The whole being blinded and fixated on that 'ideal person' that you know that you don't notice that amazingly incredible person who'd been in love with you the whole time and just wants to sweep you off your feet. And when you finally rub your eyes and gain 20/20 vision again to notice that amazingly incredible person, you realise that the ideal person was a bastard anyway and could never appreciate you as much as the amazingly incredible person.

If only life was a Hollywood romantic comedy!