the WAR called LOVE

There is the sense that LOVE is some campaign with the intent of winner takes all - including a subdued and humbled carcass. Not sure why but that's the sense i get. That need to control the outcome from the very beginning as soon as the age of excitement and discovery is OVER - it become a trench fight.

Soon subtle and not so subtle plays on each other start to take place. Then comes the gentle guiding and controlling antics.

AS they say: All's fair in love and war.
But is Love a war? Or rather i should ask: what type of war does one wage when matters of the heart are on the table? Who ultimately wins? Is there meant to be a winner?

The hollywood movies seem to have hit on some kind of format. Even the happy ever after stories have the same idea - they get the part of great strife but they wrongly assume that a "Happy ever after" exists.

I think it does at some level but not without growing the muscle required to make it truly worth it. The happy ever after state is REALLY a state of contentment or fulfillment. Nothing is truly happy ever after unless you have fought for it or have come to truly understand the REAL value and meaning of what you have.

Its like keeping your eyes on the finish line and being distracted by those behind you. Those behind don't matter - what matters is that you touch the finish line first.

In a nutshell - FOCUS.
One must also be willing to let go of the fears and doubts that keep making a dramatic comeback like a bad movie script. Faith and fear cannot exist in the same place competing over the same thing. These are habits that are breed and cultivated. You let it in - you can also throw it out.

It matters that you love but it matters more that you know what you have. The notion of proving or pursuing is so outdated that it makes one wonder what the fuss is all about. Why must someone prove to you when you either know or don't know? Why must someone convince you as to the state of your emotions or feelings when you are in a FAR better state to tell them what you feel?

What after all are these pesky feelings? They are like entanglements that become substituted for the main thing. What then is the main thing? The main thing is the conviction that you truly know you have or need and that resides in you regardless of what time of the day it is.

That is something that we see less of. The reason is not so far fetched - we're spoon fed the very nuances of our thoughts. TV, CABLE, MAGAZINES tells us what to think and sometimes even how to think. We barely challenge anything that seems to come from an authority figure without realizing that this isn't a one size fits all scenario. There are always variations and there will always continue to be variations.

We have a tendency to see everything through the narrow filters of our perception.
As they say: If you have a hammer; everything that comes along tends to look like a nail to be hit.

This state of ours is far from over. It hounds us from time to time and tests us to the limit. We become poets of reason in our bid to understand a state of mind that has no true verbal expression.
Ask your self this: Have you had anyone able to correctly describe what love is? Answer: No.

We only describe what it looks like or feels like.
That's because we cannot use the verbal facility to describe a state of mind. There is simply no correlation.

And don't argue this: It is a state of mind. It serves a function in the broader sense of human evolution asides the sappy cinematics that hollywood would have us believe. A case of life imitating ART.

No battle is ever won without casualties. Fight wisely or at least with the long term in plain view.
Remember - emotions pass. Convictions on the other hand are more lasting until they are displaced by better convictions. At the end of the day, we are masters of our fate - the ability to stir the boat through the various strife in our lives is a testament to a deeper commitment.

The human stories

From one point to another denotes displacement of some kind. Perhaps it is time, distance, events, people, experiences - all sum up to mark the inevitable disclosure that something took place. Now this is an entirely relative exercise and varies from person to person. It boils down to a perspective of sorts that denotes what each takes away during the occurrence of the said displacement.

While this treatise does not focus on the displacement - it does highligh the stories that we encounter in the various displacements that take place all through our lives. From birth to death; our lives are one story after another. Some leading to others and some seemingly standalone but never completely isolated from the story of life in which we are all participants. 

Our life stories are personal histories and we have been tasked with playing the role of historian and narrator in this macabre scheme. In film footage and taking a nod to its "PORN" roots, it's called a POV footage or in lay man's terms; point of view.

Our points of view are like the mirrors of a car that give us a view of what's behind us in the context of angles, perspectives. With a little twist to the mirror we can even cut off certain footage and focus on what we term particularly important. At that level it is an individual matter as preference comes into play.

Our stories are about triumph and failure, victory and defeat, perseverance, persistence and hard toil, easy smiles, tears that could drown the titanic and pains that closely resemble the pangs of child birth.

Like the high points or low points of every story, plot or movie - it is merely part of the narrative and provides the shades and tides and ebbs, which marks the various transitions and waypoints that life provides.

Sometimes like the mirrors in our lives, we chose to look at the past with the intent of changing something that has already taken place, sometimes it becomes a means of escape from the present travails of today's troubles. Understand that the mirror is a tool and that it does not replace or supersede the person USING the tool. Thus our ability to analyze the past does not overshadow the present nor does it warrant us to dwell In a time that has long since passed.

Just like a budding videographer - we have good takes bad takes and eventually what we preserve.

The tapestry we call life is like a movie reel and due to our edits, cuts and scrapped segments - we might end up with a version that we like or dislike.

Tools all serve a purpose and will come to their true calling in their time of need. The absurdity of the human conditions is sometimes replacing the order of dependence such that the tool becomes the master and the user becomes the slave.

Tools like us humans, are part of this narrative. We create them, we empower them, they become a part of the story told through our views and perspectives. With the passage of time, comes the occasional clarity devoid of emotions - that shows us what we should have done or where we did go wrong.

Our triumphs are merely a part of the story, so also are our failures. They do not define us unless we chose for them to do so and therefore with our own guidance and involvement, the story can perhaps lead to our real and true purpose in life.

There is no other reason to be the storyteller and narrator of your own story if you cannot determine the type of end you truly seek.

Shalom.