Our unrecognized desire to share
On my first cross-Canada road trip, my turn to drive came when we were heading east from Thunder Bay, at midnight. On the return trip, that stretch would be in daylight, and I would enjoy and marvel at the natural wonders of that wild land, but on that first journey, all I wanted to do was stay awake and, on the road, to keep alert while the others slept. For some reason I started to count how many songs I would hear on the radio before there was one that wasn’t about romantic love. For my whole shift, over fifty songs, they were all about love.
How used we are, in this culture, to just assume that all our popular songs will be about love, or the loss of it. This is not usual. In most societies, songs are sung about many things. Remember La Cucaracha, the cockroach, the song from the Mexican tradition? How many songs do you know that aren’t romantic in some nature? Hopefully, a few, but you get my drift here. We’re very limited, very fixated on this one topic. This says a lot about our longings and realities.
The sub-topic under this is sex, a most personal kind of sharing but small in itself. This is obviously paramount in our culture. Just look at our pop stars. Most are sex idols. But over all of this is our need to connect, to share. This is what is missing in our way of life, so we crave and dress it up in many ways. Its importance is clearly vocalized in our songs.
The need to share in fundamental to humans. The ability to share is what enabled us to survive in the tough old days. If we hadn’t learned to share, humans simply wouldn’t have survived. And those genes are still within us, however tamped down by our current deadly cultural norms. So, we sing of it in songs about romance. Only in these one-on-one relationships is true love, sharing, acceptable.
If we experience ultimate bonding, freedom, meaning, completeness and love in total sharing with just one person, as in our songs, imagine what is available to us if we would share with many others? We’re not talking here about ‘romantic love’, but something much larger, what Jesus of Nazareth once called The Kingdom of God, where people formed groups that were open and accepting, based not on looks, economics or traditions, but upon the one rule of sharing. Imagine the freedom you would feel, knowing that everyone else had your back, that you could try to become anything you wanted, with the support of the others. Imagine the stress and anxiety you wouldn’t carry, knowing that you were secure within the arms and lives of others, the same as they were within your care. You wouldn’t be worrying about your future, or the past. Your fears would be gone or on a completely different level, no longer able to dictate and keep you small. You would be more inventive, imaginative, loving and joyful. You would be a better ‘you’, what-ever way you looked at it.
We also ignore one reality, that love grows in un according to what we do. That love and actions are in cycle. We assume that actions come after the ‘feeling’, that we start to share after we ‘fall in love’. That is true, but the opposite is also true, that we experience love, and the accompanying feelings, after we learn from doing. Love is a matter of choice as much as a random happening or gift. This is our chance to choose.
But our culture is based on the demonic assumption that most things of value are a matter of competition, and come to us alone, that we can best grow when by ourselves. When we use the word, Freedom, we have ourselves, alone, in mind. Freedom means that we are untouchable, that we are able to do what we want, hopefully, keeping separate from others. How is that going for us? How are our families, countries, the Earth doing under this assumption?
Yet, we still sing of love, of our need and yearning for closeness and real sharing. I love the song Me and Bobby McGee. “Freedom’s just another word for ‘nothing left to lose’” reminds us that when we share everything, not having anything of our own to lose, we really are freed because we don’t have the need and responsibility to tote everything we need around with us. And in that song, what the singer misses most of all is the sharing with Bobby. So true. If we have good memories of our families, it’s of times of sharing. Sadly, many families are not based on sharing, so many of us don’t have reasons to take sharing seriously as a way of life. But even if not, I bet we still love songs that tell the message that lies deep within us all.
Sadly, singing doesn’t count for much. Love/Sharing may be in our genes and even in our hearts and minds, but if we don’t DO it, it hardly matters. The only hope for the world is that more of us start to live as we sing, to stop being contented with these truths as mere ideals and entertainment. If not, we’ll become even more isolated, alone, paranoid, dis-eased, drug ridden, suspicious and violent. I hope this is obvious.
There is hope. It’s within us. We know it. We even sing about it. Let’s start to do it. And it’s fun!
Anthony, enjoying life when I’m growing in sharing, sharing this with you. Thanks.
