Love
Poem by Sonnie Abdalla
You meet someone interesting and intriguing; you make each other smile and laugh. For days/weeks/months you spend time together; sharing thoughts, feelings, opinions, emotions and finally your bodies.
You begin enjoying their bad breath in the morning and their other physical ‘imperfections’ become the qualities which are most attractive about them.
Now you feel invincible, every second thought is of the other; your work becomes effortless, music has new meaning and food is more satisfying. You would do anything for that person; regardless of what activity you are engaged in, when thoughts of them cross your mind your heart fills with unspeakable Joy. LOVE.
Our beautiful women wait around 9 months. They observe irrepressible dramatic changes in their bodies, hormones adding to the unease as their youthful allure reshapes into maternal beauty.
The day comes, hours of labour; never before have they felt such physical pain.
Then, the mother’s screams of agony are replaced by the cries of her newly born child. The moment she looks into the babies eyes, there was no pain, there were no 9 months of discomfort; and she would do it again, a thousand times over for this state of being. LOVE.
You selflessly give to someone in need. LOVE.
You inspire or encourage another. LOVE.
You dance, you sing, you make art. LOVE.
Some of the philosophically minded would attempt to discredit these examples by saying that the LOVE between a man and woman is driven by our sub/conscious sexual desires; derived from our instinctual biological need to procreate.
Some might argue that the LOVE a woman feels for her newborn is merely a rush of endorphins, serotonin, dopamine or some other neurological chemical.
But LOVE can’t be studied, analysed or examined. It’s so simple and natural that it’s beyond the scope of intellectual/logical investigation.
Even our greatest poets who have pushed the boundaries of language can only scrape the surface of something so divine that in order to capture its true essence, can only be lived and experienced.
Then I hear the heartbroken cry – “but I loved him/her and he/she didn’t LOVE me, therefore LOVE is painful!”.
But what was the cause of your despair? was it the LOVING or the unsatisfied desire to BE LOVED?
LOVE is Truth. It is abundant and perennial; and those whom speaks cynically of it are living in self denial, denying themselves of the only thing that truly matters in life.
Thank you.
Sonnie Abdalla
08/08/2011
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