Power, Passion and Pain on Valentine's Day.

The Grammy awards were held two nights ago and a song that stands as one of the greatest ballads of this generation, won its singer, Adele the greatest gong in the music industry. After her album, ‘21’ was named album of the year she thanked a "rubbish relationship" for inspiration.  Her lyrics, laced with power, passion and pain shared in universal human experience and made her lyrics send tremors in the hearts of the torn and emotionally tarnished globally.  

I can’t write a blog about passion and pain without giving Whitney Houston a mention. Before Adele, she was the musical great whose music we all blasted, whose love we all related to, whose voice echoed in our minds and hearts and who wrote with passion, sung with power and shared her pain in a public forum. It almost appears that one cannot have extreme success without extreme pain; in life and in love..

The rawest of emotions spark the strongest of responses and the truest of feelings shared, inspire the greatest of human connections.

This is my valentine’s day musing. While many may be mourning their single status (congratulations to those who aren’t today), the rest of us should take consolation in the fact that relationships are difficult – one of life’s greatest struggles and the longevity of a relationship, is one of life’s greatest successes. You don’t want to be in one unless you’re prepared for the long-suffering nature of it.

A few weeks ago, I watched the movie that is getting rave reviews among Oscar big-wigs for its portrayal of reality, ‘The Descendants.’ As George Clooney’s character bids farewell to his dying wife, he says a few poignant words that have since, lingered in my memory.

 “Goodbye my joy, goodbye my pain, goodbye my love, goodbye my friend goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.”

Love struck me as one of the most paradoxical emotions or states of being that you could experience. You could love, but you’d have moments of hatred, you could give, when you only wanted to take and had nothing left to give. You would share, when you only wanted to be left alone. You would fight, even when you had no energy to keep going. You would stay, when it would be easier to leave, you would give your heart, even at the risk of it being broken.

That love is the rarest kind and that’s the one we singles are waiting for. It’s also what you taken people should be experiencing.

Someone like Adele felt broken. Opportunity didn’t knock so she created a door while she was waiting for her next great love. Look to the lessons you’ve learned, the realisation of your capacity to love and seek relationships or opportunities that will evaporate your bitterness and encourage your growth. She did and it paid off massively!

 Someone like Whitney let her love break her. The difference between the two icons of passion, power and pain, were that one searched for someone to complete her, when that love only depleted her and the other realised she didn't need someone to complete her, she just needed someone to accept her completely (and then wrote an award winning song about it).

This Valentine’s day, look how you can grow from the experiences that hurt you, never stop believing that love will come but know that when it does, it will rock your world (not always positively). The road won’t be easy – it will be paved with problems, but the trials will be worth it for a lifetime threaded with power and passion that somehow nullifies the pain it often causes.

Look for love to be everything but don’t feel like nothing when it doesn’t work out. Let love change you for the better and if it diminishes your spirit (like Whitney) then escape before it destroys your soul.

I’m all for commercialism and extravagant displays of love and affection, but we all should take note that in that bouquet of roses are stems full of thorns and the hard work put in to that relationship is deserving of that recognition (today and always).

This year, don’t  be jealous of people that have love, be happy that they’ve found it and be all ears to how they’ve managed to sustain it. I’ll be blasting Whitney and Adele in the meantime. I’m such a cliché.

Mr not-too-bad...too bad for you.

Madeleine had just lost her sister to marriage and Greg the gorilla with his age old hunter gatherer qualities set his sights on Maddy as his playmate. He would court her for a while. She would resist. This would not be a Tarzan and Jane story but after much persistence from Greg, many beats of the chest and hairy advances, Madeleine finally succumbed to Greg the Gorilla. 

He was far from perfect but he was available. Madeleine would live to regret this decision for years into the future but for a while, when the future looked bleak, Greg, in the right light, seemed attractive. Madeleine learnt that she had a great capacity for love. She learnt that she was not as superficial as she thought and she learnt that she could love anyone if she was patient with them. Great lessons from a horrid experience.

George and Madeleine lasted a while. They were comfortable but not passionate about each other. Madeleine gave love as she wanted to be loved. Greg the Gorilla was content in his conquest. He got the girl and he was bananas over her for a while…till he was ready to play with the other animals in the wild. Madeleine felt used but accepted that maybe the downfall of her animal kingdom was her fault. She answered Greg’s mating call when she knew in the depths of her heart that he was not the one. She settled.

Plato said, ‘every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back,’ but I don’t think he meant completion came with any old whisper. It had to be the same tune, the same songbird chirping in reply – not a bear to a bird.  

Women in years to come would sing a song of the same melody that Madeleine once chirped. Then an IVF study would be released that would tell women to do exactly what Madeleine had sworn she’d never do again…settle for Mr-not-too-bad. 

An IVF specialist advised women the world over, this month to change their criteria for Mr Right in order to more speedily settle down and bear children rather than resort to freezing their eggs. Fertility clinics have begun targeting their services to women in their 20s and 30s, but the professor leading the study, Professor Kovacs warned women that the success rate from egg freezing was low and that women couldn't rely on it later in life.

This got me thinking about whether having children with a man you half loved was worth sacrificing the love you envisioned for yourself? I would much rather stick with a man I loved who I couldn’t have children with (God forbid that I can’t) than have children with a man who wasn’t everything I hoped for. The logic behind that is that I would have the chance to know and find the love of my life before I ever got to know my children so I’d rather keep something that I knew and loved rather than give it up for a child I didn’t know. 

For those wondering, I’m perfectly healthy and to my knowledge, able to have children, but this was worth the contemplation. 

Professor Kovacs of the IVF study stressed, “"maybe there is no Mr. Right and you have to settle for Mr. Not-Too-Bad. There is no such thing as a perfect person for anybody, and even if they're perfect now, they won't be perfect in five or 10 years time."

Professor Kovacs either settled for Mr-not-too-bad or was going through a bitter breakup and my assessment of her would read; broken-hearted and embittered, but I’d never call her accurate. 

I loathe the idea of settling. I detest the thought of being with someone who is less than what I hoped for and I’m sickened by the nightmare of spending the rest of my life with someone who is less than perfect for me. It’s not that my expectations are too high; it’s that whoever disagrees with me has expectations too low for themselves. 

There’s no reason to want less than perfection for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you’re the cleaner or the Queen, you’re a person, deserving of love and that love should come in the form you dreamed, not something you find in a discount bin with a  short shelf-life and an early used by date. 

Freeze your eggs if you must, but if you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket, then make sure with that investment, that the basket is strong enough to support you – that to me is the perfection most women seek and it’s out there. When you find it (because it’s only a matter of time), that love will be perfect in five and ten and even twenty years time. It won’t be a fairytale, it will be hard work but it will be real and that’s so much better than the imaginary. 

If you’re in it for life, be in it for love and leave Greg the Gorilla in the jungle where he belongs. Let Madeleine’s lesson be yours too; Mr-not-too-bad is also Mr-not-good-enough for you.

Happily ever after…when never is more in sight.

I have been incessantly listening to Adele’s album this week; putting me in a happy/sad/love-longing/depressed/elated/fantastical mood. It pulls on every heart string and stirs every emotion – much like a break-up. I’ve been continuously listening to stories of them too (but that has been less of a choice).

The one track on replay has been ‘hiding my heart,’ about the inevitable heartbreak that comes from a transient relationship.

One friend I have knows all about this. This week I felt, saw and attempted to help her heartbreak as she dignifiedly watches on as an old flame, passionately prepares for his wedding to a new love (less than a year on from their break up). The girl he’s with also experienced devotee devastation when her former five year relationship crumbled. One woman’s treasure, was another woman’s treasure and woman number one was trashed instead. Love had to be cruel to be kind to her and though we know not to play with fire, sometimes we need to be burnt to move on.

It won’t make much sense to her for a while but there would never be enough love, or enough joy to fill her in a relationship where the love she had was unrequited.

I’m no expert on why one girl gets chosen over the other and what makes a man commit but I do know that if he hasn’t committed to you, then he’s simply not the one. I am all for shades of grey… but for healing’s sake, this is one truth that will always be black and white to me. If love exists it finds a way to conquer.

What gives me hope and assurance in this is a friend who has newly found love. Love even visited her in her dreams before she met him. True story.

I love this tale so much because this woman confirms that the right man is worth waiting for. Good things come to those who wait. The cliché is true.

She however is anything but cliché. She is vibrant, intelligent, beautiful (in and out), hard-working and very successful. I can’t fault her on anything. She is everything most women would hope to be (me included).

Women used to be told to downplay their intelligence so as to avoid intimidating the opposite sex. Her intelligence attracted a mental and emotional equal and the prospect of finding something like that thrills and delights me.

This young beauty was single for a while but was a champion for love. I’d hear her talk about meeting a man that brought her joy most days that I saw her. Perhaps her positivity powered this new romance. God knows she deserved that happiness. Everybody does and most people will get to experience it, but not without a period of loneliness first.

I think the secret to this is that in order to appreciate the love you have, you have to experience what it means to live without them so when they walk on set as an extra in your life, you quickly realize that you’d prefer them as a regular cast member with the scenes of romance on replay.

The real stuff is good too. The fights and the way you overcome them. The dark moments and the days their light rescues you from that misery. The moment when simply seeing them where you are is enough to satiate your hungry soul. Hearing their voice will do that too. Then their’s that day it unlocks happiness that was previously foreign to you. It’s this love that I’m waiting for.

It’s also this love that I hope soon comes to my friend. Heartbreak has forced her to hide her heart, but I hope that when the grieving is over and the healing begins, she is able to reopen her heart to find love that friend #2 in this story has got to know.

While love songs do nothing for my patience, they do plenty for my passion. and remind me that that fire is worth waiting out in the cold for. There’s a positive in everything.