Monday, March 15, 2010

LOVE ALL OVER THE PLACE


This was originally written as part of Ophelia's Web as a guest post for the topic of LOVE. Of course, I ran a tad late in delivering, but figured I would share just the same. Thanks so much to Elisa for challenging me with such a fertile topic.

When I think about love, so many things run through my head in an instant, it's difficult to even make sense of them, let alone try to write about them. I can at least try to categorize this plethora of loves I feel into two basic human and non-human classifications. The obvious first human expression of my love would be for my family. To me, the two offspring my wife and I created couldn't be a more perfect way of expressing our mutual love.

On the human side, there is also my love of people that make me laugh and that energize me. I love how the right person or combination of people can really bring out the best in my abilities and myself as a person, which is why I love Maine so much. Nowhere have I felt such a genuine friendliness and mutual humanity in all my travels as I do in Maine.

Living in Maine certainly could qualify as a non-human love. But it has led me to a newly discovered love I never knew I’d feel. I now love performing or speaking in public. Ironically, this has been studied and discovered to be people’s greatest fear next to death. I had no idea that as a musician/singer in high school who was always incredibly nervous at performance time would learn to love that same adrenaline rush. Rush is actually the perfect word to describe the feeling I get seeing a group of people enlightened by something I’ve said or done. I love knowing that people get what I’m trying to put across even if sometimes it’s complete nonsense.

On the non-human side, I have my love of social media and more specifically, Twitter. I’ve been on Twitter for just about a year, and recently did some research and created a 'tweet cloud' (An arranged collection of the most frequently used keywords) of my all of my tweets. I found the word LOVE was the one word I chose above all others to express myself.

My love of music is another incredible passion. It is a love so deep and categorically inconsistent, that I wouldn't dare bore you with the details other than my tastes vary as much as music itself. Of course, there are exceptions. Those of you that know me personally could attest to those exceptions as my passion for disliking some music matches my love of others.

And finally, there is also my semi-secret love of all the nerdy indulgences I embrace. Whether it's fine scale modeling, model railroading, oil painting, sculpture or even my unpracticed trumpet and bass playing. These interests are something I would love to have the time to pursue. Those pursuits however, are on hold while I pursue my first listed love above.

No comments: