Passion

During dinner we were having a discussion asking if men and women can be simply friends or even if this relationship exists between the sexes. The talk started after my sister said she was just friends with some boy in her class. It made me think about something Oscar Wilde said. It was, “between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.” When I read this quote I wondered why someone would think this. Maybe because there is so much tension between the two sexes nothing else would be possible. Is genetics or hormones the reason for this? The feelings Wilde said were all extremes. Like dislike or complete and total infatuation. I don’t think men and women can simply coexist. We are all genetically coded to want to reproduce so when we can’t with the opposite sex we simply cast them away. I don’t think it is intentionally but simply our animal instincts kicking in trying to make sure our genes are passed on and as much as anyone would like to admit it we all do have animal instincts still that we can’t get rid of.

It’s like a gravitational pull that people have towards each other.

Music

I’ve always loved listening to music. I knew it was a part of me but I have always had a hard time expressing how I felt until I read one of Ray Charles’s quotes. It stated, “I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my liver, my heart. Like my blood. It was a force already within me when I arrived on the scene. It was a necessity for me-like food or water.” I think all true musicians feel this way. Like Jimi Hendrix or Slash. Whenever I hear a good song I can literally feel the rhythm flow through my veins, the beat thump syncing with my heart. I told my mother this when I was younger and she looked at me as if I told her I flew to Antarctica last night. I thought she would understand since she was my mother and an adult but she didn’t seem to have the musical ear like I did. She couldn’t feel the notes pulsing through her body like I could. My father and my sister understood me. My father knew why I just had to dance whenever a certain song came on and my sister understood when I said I can feel the beat thumping in my heart.

Music has the power to bring nations together in the time of stress like the birth of Rock and Roll in the sixties with Elvis Presley. It can even help someone get over there depression like I dare you to move by Switch foot. Music moves people to do great things. If the song has a fast beat I want to dance if it has a softer melody I want to ponder my life and wonder what can happen.

So saying I love music is an understatement. I live for music. I breathe it in with every cell in my body. It makes me want to be amazing.  I have the up most respect for outstanding musicians because they get to make things that everyone gets to hear and feel.

Love

Many new people want to be loved, but what is love? Is it staying up all night waiting for your boyfriends phone call? It is the way a mom cuts their child’s sandwich diagonally because they know they like it better that way? Or is it the way two best friends can stay up until three in the morning talking about their problems and being there for each other. I think Corinthians chapter thirteen verse four through seven explained what love is perfectly. It states, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.” Many believe that if you are perfect you will be loved but that is not the case. If that were true the only way to love is by being perfect and since true perfection doesn’t exist, true love wouldn’t exist.  

To be loved is one of the best feelings in the world but being able to love is THE best feeling in the world. The idea of love is so complex that it seems strange that a four letter word can describe it all. Are we all destined to fall in love, to find our soul mate and skip off happily ever after into the sunset. Or is love only granted to the greatest of human beings and the rest of humanity has to learn to live without it.

There are different types of love. The kiss on the cheek a mother gives to her child; or the tender touch of two lovers after getting home from working a nine hour shift. As a young girl I dreamt that one day I would be able to love someone that deeply but I think loving someone truly and completely is an ability, and some people just aren’t able to love something or someone.

Most people think that without love they won’t be complete but in my opinion you have to feel complete on your own and learn to love yourself before you can really love anyone else.

Teenagers use the world freely without really knowing what it means. Every time that happens they make it harder on themselves to find actual love because they aren’t seeing this ability for what it truly is. To love someone truly is like giving someone a fully loaded gun pointed at your heart and trusting them not to pull the trigger. If someone says they are in love, but they aren’t ready to hand over the “gun” then they are just lying to themselves.

Freedom

John F. Kennedy once said, “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility - I welcome it.” When I heard this I sat back and considered America as a country and how many wars we have been in. It seems to be a major war every two or three generations compared to a country like Africa who citizens are going to war with some new threat every night. It made me wonder if American citizens could handle surviving in a country like Africa. Would we defend freedom with our lives? Or would we cave in at the first sign of danger?

I also reflected on myself. If the time came for me to defend freedom, would I be able to defend the greatest idea my country was founded on? I believe there are numerous ways to defend freedom. John F. Kennedy defended freedom by doing his best as president. The way I defend freedom is by getting educated because I have the freedom to. There and many countries where women still can’t go to school because it is not a “woman’s place”. They aren’t free. Many female students take getting an education for granted. They don’t welcome defending the freedoms that our founding fathers fought for.

Some people forget that defending Freedom is in fact a responsibility. Children now have a sense of entitlement and think they deserve freedom without doing their part to make sure it preserves for the future generations to come.

Freedom is something many people have lived and died for. The idea that you can do what you want without fear of being killed or shunned is inspirational. Millions of people came to America because of this one idea and many more have died trying to get here. My brother defends our freedom by serving our country in the United States Military; I defend my Freedom by getting educated and trying to educate others, and the President defends Freedom by being the leader of the country. Freedom is a responsibility that ever citizen has since birth. How they choose to defend the idea of freedom is their choice. Everyone should do their part to defend freedom because freedom is threatened with every new generation and by every person who thinks they deserve things without fighting for them.