14 February 2006
Gigantic, True Love
by Nanci Olesen
Listen to an audio version of this MOMbo essay.
It’s Valentine’s Day. The kids are probably having the most fun of all of us, with their decorated valentine boxes and their painstakingly signed, hand made, heart shaped cards. If you’re a parent, did you go overboard helping them? I think it might have been because you were trying to return to that simple construction paper and chocolate holiday that was so vital, and easy.
This holiday, it’s all about love, right? But it’s just romantic love. Some kind of personal love. Sort of cute love.
You know what we need today? We need gigantic, true love.
We need the kind of gigantic, true love that will make us slow down and let a person who is frantically signaling to get in our lane on the freeway IN, even if it will cut milliseconds off of our own travel time.
We need some gigantic true love that will bring us all the way to what is possible: a gigantic true love that is full of respect and kindness for each other. Not just the people that look like us or have chosen to send their kids to the same school that we have. Not just the artists whose art we like but the artists whose art we think is really … bad. If we can’t reach toward the ultimate goal of finding a love for each other that will stop us from killing each other and ruining our planet, or just snubbing one another on a daily basis, why should we even bother to send valentines and consume large quantities of chocolate?
I believe in the possibilities of all the technology that we are so rapidly inventing. I believe in the speed of modern travel and what it opens up to us. I am completely, middle-of-the night frightened by the atrocities, large and small, that are taking place on our planet. I’m afraid of what’s become of us and where we are headed.
I seriously condone that on this day if we could reach for a gigantic heart shaped true love that surpasses our petty concerns and our insistence on noticing the differences between us, but instead opens us up to the possibilities of harmony and co existence, we could move forward to a whole different reality. I can’t really think of how else we’re going to figure this all out.
I want more. I want more love. I want gigantic true love on the entire planet this Valentine’s Day.
—Nanci Olesen
producer and host, MOMbo: 1990-2007 |
