Today I would like to share with you a reality. This is an idea that permeates our modern popular culture. It is in the majority of music, it is depicted in movies, described in novels, and has infiltrated the modern ideas of love, marriage, romance, and the roles of men and women in our society.
What am I getting in about? Well think about it. How many of our cultures "love songs" are actually about love? How many of them even attempt to describe two individuals learning to love, and to enjoy one another?
No the reality is that most of these songs revolve around either someone wanting someone they can't have, someone proclaiming how much happier they are with a new partner, someone lamenting how their lover is gone, someone trying to convince someone else why they should be together, or someone boasting about how they've cheated. One of these scenarios describes the vast majority of what our culture calls love songs. In some cases they do try to demonstrate a devotion to an individual, which while an improvement, still doesn't depict what love actually is beyond the immediate infatuation.
Because the majority of the people listen to music, watch movies, and indulge in other media that reinforces that view without ever actually teaching what love is, then the majority of people emulate the popular culture with disastrous results. As a result many people tend to associate love with misery and heartache. The only enjoyment they see in it is the sexual pleasure, and maybe a temporary emotional satisfaction. A satisfaction for ones self. So in other words, what many call love is actually selfishness.
There is very little regard for the feelings or needs of the other individual apart from what may secure future benefit for the self. This is basically a great deal of indifference towards others. And indifference is only one step removed from hatred. Because many were never invested for the right reasons, all it takes to create bitterness and resentment is unfulfilled expectations, a misunderstanding, an argument, or a more enticing option, and what they once thought was love turns into hurt, anger, and misery.
And yet they persist in this course, to a large degree, because in most cases they haven't seen many, if any, examples of real love. The world has taught them this faux love, and taught them that the pain and hardship are part of it. Also selfishness is a natural tendency. Real love requires that we become selfless. That we give up the pride and ego. That we actually sacrifice for others. That we put away our vain ambitions, our selfish desires, and our need to "be right" and to justify our own position.
My position on the popular culture is this. Don't listen to it. It brings nothing but pain and misery. The popular music will not bring you happiness. The popular movies will not bring you joy. And emulating the doctrines they teach will bind you down in misery.
