I’m going to a place you may not want to explore but I urge you to engage me and bring me closer to your heart as I speak of love. It’s not a love article in the conventional sense, but a perspective we have overlooked many a time.
Love is a word that stirs joy, hope, fond memories and on the other hand, disappointment,pain,uncertainty or a balance of positive and negative emotions and feelings. Depending on each individual’s frame of reference, love may mean many different things.
I have stopped defining natural feelings with dictionaries or measuring them against society’s expectations, beliefs and wishes.I firmly believe love is not exclusive-especially to a knight in shining amour or a princess with a crooked tiara. I don’t believe in blurred self seeking or confused love(as in hills of lovers-lentswe la baratani) that stems thoughts of eloping, reciting adjective filed soppy poems or making one person a figment of one’s imagination and existence nor frantic moments of lust filled passion in dark corners. The love I know is purer than that. It flows endlessly like a perennial river and touches the core of the soul in a way no simple phrase could.
There is love and there’s “love”. I appreciate what love has done to me. From learning to love myself, life, family, acquaintances and even strangers I encounter daily. Loving life and its elements. Treating everything and everyone with reverence and gentleness.
Honouring, people’s existence and being without being quick to judge them. Showing you care through gesture, touch, hugs, laughter, moments of silence and healing words. There’s a magic in showing love that surpasses human explanation.
In the noise that is everyday life, I have realized there is a calming quiet in love. Giving with no intention to receive,caring without inhibition, appreciating without unfairly judging and coming forth in purity.
This is love.
People love many things and it’s this love that builds them and contributes to the positive of the world. This love radiates on faces, it’s felt in atmospheres, it reeks in words and closes invisible spaces that divide people.
With loving your higher power, family, friends, interests etcetera, there is a greater love that makes loving a more fulfilling and satisfying experience,that can carry you beyond skies-loving oneself.
I know that you can’t love without loving yourself first. Treating yourself the way you wish to be treated,behaving in a way that encourages peace.When you love yourself-you learn to let go of many things that aren’t positive and free yourself from a prison you may be in.The universe responds to how we feel and the energies that we release.Ever noticed what a ‘bad’ day you have when you are grumpy or angry?Or how ‘snaax’ people seem to be when you are uptight?It’s energy.It’s invisible but it exists.All thoughts turn to energy and manifest to reality.
Everyday I dream of a world free of oppression, hate, selfishness, ignorance etc. I dream of positive possibility .It may be “idealist riddled” thinking to some,but instead of bathing in misery and negativity, I choose to walk through the battlefield. I laugh,smile,jump up and down and tap to the music that plays in my heart.No,I’m notinsane,I choose to live with love and reverence to lighten a life that could turn into darkness darker than night.
Some of us have past experiences and upbringings that distorted our ability to love, while others have always known love.With effort and patience love can be a permanent and strong part of our existence. Love opens a door of opportunities for personal and societal growth. There comes a sense of understanding, a need to protect, cherish and celebrate. With these qualities, an environment conducive to healthy human development is borne and changes can germinate from a stabilized place.
To all those we have loved, have failed to love,continue to love,hope to love and will love.To those who think they cannot love,refuse to love and know not love.It’s cold outside but warm inside.Love,like hope, ‘sees the impossible and feels the intangible’. I challenge you all to love purely.
With love, Africans can elevate themselves to a higher place of existence, by appreciating themselves, one another and the world they live in. The struggle heroes who worked hard for their people’s liberation didn’t do it because they had to but rather because of the love they possessed within. They felt no need to wield guns, segregate, judge, accuse nor hurt to achieve what they wanted. Their efforts were meant to benefit all people, not a particular group. With this as common ground,the aspirations we have for ourselves as a people will be binded strongly like a read basket and will stand the test of time like the enamel cups and bowls used in the villages. The wars, oppressions , abuses, killing etc that happen are not the result of love-it’s self hate that manifests on a broader scale-but an absence of this element which could change the face of humanity if people would choose to act on this thought.
Much love Keletso Thobega
