Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Many Splendoured Thing
I know it’s the time of the year to trot out the anti-capitalism rhetoric, denounce the commercialization of love, recite love-lorn non-sequitar, curse flower-sellers and the like but instead, something else touched my heart on this day (Ok, technically it’s not Valentine’s anymore but just humour me here).
And it wasn’t even a personal or physical experience. It was just something that I read on an online blues forum, an innocent thread started with a question along the line of “What made you first feel the blues?”
I wasn’t quite anticipating the enormity of it. The first few responses talked about romances gone wrong, but soon the thread delved into topics of death, illnesses, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, physically and sexually abusive childhoods, things which I couldn’t imagine being shared with anyone beyond very close personal circles, much less on an online forum. The courage that they mustered to share those events was incredible, and I could not even begin to imagine some of the things they went through happening to me.
Yet there was something enlightening in this otherwise somber discussion. With every story of sadness came a tale of musical healing and recovery, every love and life lost was a love and life gained elsewhere. The remarkable resilience of the human nature shone through for all, and knowing what the blues has done for people who share my taste in music around the world made me realize how lucky I really am.
Though I’m not a religious person, I believe I live a much blessed life. Definitely there are things that I wish did or did not happen, but I do not bear in my heart any heavy sorrows or deep hatreds. At this point, on the brink of becoming a working adult, my life has been relatively positive. There were things I could have continued to feel bitter about, but in retrospect they were all comparatively trivial or inconsequential. There is much to look forward to, though of course the abovementioned thread did remind me about the frailties of human life.
Romantic love is something of which I have precious little personal knowledge, but I’ve seen how it falls from grace at all stages in a relationship from dating right through to marriage, sometimes a little too up-close for my liking. I may or may not be the wiser for all that I’ve seen. That, time will tell.
On this day of extravagant shows of love, I witnessed a deeper, more profound one from a most unlikely source, an online blues forum. Then again, perhaps it's not that unlikely.
And it wasn’t even a personal or physical experience. It was just something that I read on an online blues forum, an innocent thread started with a question along the line of “What made you first feel the blues?”
I wasn’t quite anticipating the enormity of it. The first few responses talked about romances gone wrong, but soon the thread delved into topics of death, illnesses, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, physically and sexually abusive childhoods, things which I couldn’t imagine being shared with anyone beyond very close personal circles, much less on an online forum. The courage that they mustered to share those events was incredible, and I could not even begin to imagine some of the things they went through happening to me.
Yet there was something enlightening in this otherwise somber discussion. With every story of sadness came a tale of musical healing and recovery, every love and life lost was a love and life gained elsewhere. The remarkable resilience of the human nature shone through for all, and knowing what the blues has done for people who share my taste in music around the world made me realize how lucky I really am.
Though I’m not a religious person, I believe I live a much blessed life. Definitely there are things that I wish did or did not happen, but I do not bear in my heart any heavy sorrows or deep hatreds. At this point, on the brink of becoming a working adult, my life has been relatively positive. There were things I could have continued to feel bitter about, but in retrospect they were all comparatively trivial or inconsequential. There is much to look forward to, though of course the abovementioned thread did remind me about the frailties of human life.
Romantic love is something of which I have precious little personal knowledge, but I’ve seen how it falls from grace at all stages in a relationship from dating right through to marriage, sometimes a little too up-close for my liking. I may or may not be the wiser for all that I’ve seen. That, time will tell.
On this day of extravagant shows of love, I witnessed a deeper, more profound one from a most unlikely source, an online blues forum. Then again, perhaps it's not that unlikely.
# posted by BloozeGit @ 2:55 am 
