Bombarded by Love

Many loves are bombarding us with offers every day. I passionately love ice cream, so I find my myself bombarded by far too many loves in the freezer section of the grocery store. The endless loves don’t stop there. We love cool weather on a hot day, warm weather on a cool day. We love a new outfit, the new song on the radio, and a cute little purse. As media would have it, we love a favorite football team, a beer, a clean shave. We love the curve of our car, a sparkling diamond, an ipod and a latte. We love famous athletes, gorgeous women, our cell phone plan, and a nearly infinite list of distractions for our life’s affections.

To add to all those loves, with the right soap, your skin tone will be as irresistible as the nearest super model. With the right sunglasses, he’ll take a second look. With the right skirt, he’ll follow you home. If he drives the right car, you’re sexy when in it. The right fragrance, he’ll step in closer. The right lip stick, his lips stick to yours. The right shampoo, his hands glide through your hair. If you kick off the right pair of shoes, he’ll take you ‘all the way’. Cap it off with the right mattress, and he might come again. And with all that, if love doesn’t happen for you with buying soap, shampoo, beer, fragrances, shoes, mattress, lip stick and a car – then there is something seriously wrong with you. The message is clear; because love is everywhere, how could you possibly be missing it?

All the media images bombarding us everyday imply that most everyone in the world is in love or falling in love. Yet there are many singles internet sites that offer to you the love of millions of singles at your keyboard fingertips. So if love or lust is so prevalent and so easily attained, then why are there millions on the internet paying so much money to search for it?

Our tax forms, insurance forms, employment forms, all ask us if we are “single” or “married”. It is our culture’s great delineator; those of us in love and those of us not. A friend said to me that she hated being asked by coworkers, parent’s friends, and married women, if she was single. When she answers, it’s as though she’s contracted a new incurable personality virus. At which point, the inquirer squints and winces and knows not what else to say. For her, an older single woman, the label of single sometimes just feels like a label adhered to the leftovers.

But yet single people do not have the monopoly on feeling alone and leftover. Even the best of marriages are no cake walk, and spouses can feel lonely even within a marriage. For others a creeping emptiness leads to a downward spiral of affairs. For some the label of being single is all to similar to the single hits on the radio, the “one hit wonders”. The single hits are often a direct parallel to dating for so many women—the guy that bungee jumps into her bed for a one hit wonder but then she is left wondering the next morning where the heck he went.

Maybe its too easy to lose the kind of love we’re intended to find.

When any of us turn on the TV, turn on the radio, turn on the internet, turn on anything and you will find everything to “turn you on”, or remind you that while others are falling in love or in marital ecstasy, you are supposedly meant to feel still miserably alone. Nearly every media form shows how life is suddenly and permanently blissful when you fall in love, or at least satisfyingly sexy if you succumb to some lustful desire. Admittedly, I sometimes wonder, what on earth is wrong with me if I’m not getting a piece of that incredible love? Or what is wrong with this planet if I am supposed to joyfully accept the arrival and departure of “bungee man”? But simply stated, love needs a rework. Falling in love even more so.

So I blog to flip on its head our dreaming of love, falling in love, tripping on love, being in love, staying in love, adhering to love, succumbing to love. No one is, no matter their label, ever a ‘leftover’. We can always be in love. Life is rich with loves, and you are adored, perhaps in a different manner than the teeth-whitening commercial would imply. We all can be in love in a far deeper, thicker, richer manner that the mediocrity of affections our culture currently pressures us to accept. No matter what, there are many loves in life, some certainly more deep-in-the-heart passionate than others. When I say I love my ice cream, it is hardly something I really love. My heart is loyal to family, to friends, and of course to the one man I love, I just haven’t found him yet. So far he hasn’t been standing next to me in the freezer section when I’m selecting my other hard-packed pints of creamy loves. Or perhaps, I was so distracted by my choices, I missed him standing there.

I invite you, whether married or solo, dating or not dating, youthful or packed with rich experiences, to share in my stories of what we are sometimes missing when just standing there, or just walking by. Occasionally when I’m digging into an outrageously yummy pint of ice cream hoping to find one of those big chocolate chunk gems, my spoon hits an air bubble, a manufacturing defect, and it jabs through to the bottom of the pint. I realize then I’ve been gypped from the total fluid ounces I was promised at time of purchase, and that the chocolate chunk gem was left on the manufacturing line. Life is just the opposite. There are no air pockets, your spoon never jabs through and finds a vacuum. There is always a love there, and I look forward to sharing the little spoonfuls of all the crazy passionate loves we find in life. I hope you enjoying reading them, and I hope you enjoy finding them in your own life too.

Blogging out for now, will write again soon.

Comments

[lizzie]

Thanks so much for your inspiring message.
As you say, life is indeed rich with love and so often we don't realize how full of love we are because of the definition given to love by the media. I sent your sweet words to a good friend who is filled with a love of life and is looking for love with another in ways that don't include a love of herself...that is fundamental. Your message shows us how mistaken we often are in our search. Thanks
again! Look forward to hearing more. Lizzie

[KTB]

I very much enjoyed "Bombarded by Love." I most especially liked your proposal that we often miss love because we're so distracted by the lure of the many choices of fake ones. I do believe that healthy, spiritual love is truly all around us, always. It's up to us to open our eyes, ears and hearts.

[CLE]

Jeannine, you are a cunning writer! I adore your insight and wisdom and anxiously await your next blog. Five star introduction, no left overs here!! You have taken the world of blog to a whole new level. GO GIRL!

[Lori]

"A friend said to me that she hated being asked by coworkers, parent’s friends, and married women, if she was single. When she answers, it’s as though she’s contracted a new incurable personality virus. At which point, the inquirer squints and winces and knows not what else to say. For her, an older single woman, the label of single sometimes just feels like a label adhered to the leftovers."

Is it possible that when your friend tells people she's single, and the inquirer squints and winces, that they are not reacting to the fact that she's single, but to the vibe she gives off--that she feels like leftovers? I am 36, happily single, and I've never gotten such a bad reaction to telling people I am single.

[Jeannine]

Hello Lori,

Thank you for your comments, you are right—our manner towards others has much to do with how they react to us. Yet I think when you are 36 and single, it is a very different feeling than when you are 60 or older and never married, with no children. You are not yet an "older single woman" by any means. You have about another 20 years to go.

Also, not everyone is the same, and hence our life experiences do not always directly transfer to others. It is not my friend's fault for how others react to her status. She is kind, giving, and has a heart of gold. Hence, I do think society needs to be very generous of heart with those who have not had the chance to have marriage and children--it can be a tremendous loss that needs to be treated with great compassion and sensitivity.

Sometimes it is just plain bad luck that has caused their status, not their “vibes”. To say a woman's "vibes" cause the problem is insensitive to the reality of her feelings and denies the truth of the inappropriate reactions of those around her. Individuals who have experienced tremendous loss do not always convey that loss in their outward appearance through their vibes, in fact pain is often deeply hidden. And also, for those who express loss or pain it is best to give them the benefit of the doubt and offer understanding and hope, rather than assume outright that it is self-inflicted.

Yes, it is extremely true there are individuals in the world who are convinced the world is against them--they pout and have terrible pity parties and thus bring on negative "vibes", and nobody wants to be around them. But I have found those individuals to be equally distributed between those whom are married and single, and their behavior is generally a sign of deeper, sometimes hidden, pain. In the case of my friend and others like her, they do not fall into that category. We need to be understanding of the difficulty they face in life, as it is very real, and not self-induced.