Love and indifference

I can’t tell you who said it, just like I can’t tell you who wrote that album with the third song with a moving drum beat. I am bad at remembering who did things but good at remembering what was said and more importantly, how I felt about them. For what its worth, I think he was was a holocaust survivor. The quote is “the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.” This ties in to something I was recently speaking with a friend about. The idea that being forgotten or left behind, not out of some malevolence, but simply out of ignorance, is a sore fate for someone who you once called a friend.

    My friend’s social issues aside, this concept slips through our fingers daily. Much like how the concept slips, the way it affects us is a slipping of sorts through the fingers. I pose the question, “what in your life, did you once care for and like doing, that you have since stopped or no longer think of?” It could be a person or a thing or an action. We all have them. Not the firefly hate of walking away from a long lived passion of person, place, or practice, but the subtle, unsexy, decay of a once loved idea. You may not even notice that this thing is gone until someone stirs the pot of your mind to only find it sitting, rotten on the very bottom, or even worse, gone entirely. We all go through the motions and life moves in a direction, hopefully, but not likely, of our choosing. Along the way we lose things that we cared about. 

    Everyone does this. No one can cling to all that they have ever loved. We all can, however, think about what we haven’t thought of and then attempt to reconnect. Maybe you find that you are glad it is gone, by never realizing you missed it. Maybe you find that your an asshole for ignoring it and start to gather your kindling of attention in order to reintroduce this thing into your life practice.

    What I am talking about, you all already know. This is a call to action. Do not let the weariness of your days silently strip you of all that you have loved without so much as a look over the shoulder. For most of us, it’s already too late to cling to these ideas, but for all of us, we can begin to look into them again. How have we changed since we did the thing? Do we still want to do the thing? Why did we stop doing the thing? Yes, this may lead to a myriad of excuses about this, that, and the other, but all excuses are rooted in something. If these things are something you want, then you will grow into them as you begin to fertilize them again. It's one thing to hate something and consciously cast it aside. It is much worse to let time pull it from right under your nose as you go about your life. Pay attention to those around you and to the things you care about. You might not be able to give everything the attention it deserves, but the least we can do is try. Thin the rows if you need to, to give everything the room it needs to set deep roots and healthy canopies. You’ll be glad you did.