“‘Same Old Same Old,’ to me, represents the ache of monogamy. This isn’t an ‘I’m leaving you’ song. It’s a vulnerable confession of ‘I don’t want to leave. I want to work on this – with you.’ Having said that, someone once told me a story about long term relationships. To think of them as a continent to explore. I could spend a lifetime backpacking through Africa, and I would still never know all there is to know about that continent. To stay the course, to stay intentional, to stay curious and connected – that’s the heart of it. But it’s so easy to lose track of the trail, to get tired, to want to give up, or to want a new adventure. It can be so easy to lose sight of the goodness and mystery within the person sitting right in front of you. That continent idea inspires me, and makes the ache (when it comes) hurt a little less. To know that it happens to all of us. What I’m realizing now is that sometimes the ‘same old same old’ can actually be rich, worthwhile and a great adventure.”
“Therefore: love endures all things–and is blessed in its endurance, for this endurance makes it grow ever greater and ever more irresistible. Love that only has to endure a little will stay weak. Love that endures all things will gain victory.”
“But love doesn’t want anything from the other person–what it wants is everything for that person. It doesn’t want to possess the other person, especially not to have him or her jealously all to itself. It only wants to love the other person, because it cannot do otherwise.”
“Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it”
Finding Simba with Purple Pants Man.
I recently went to the circus. It was fun and weird all at the same time. One moment that stuck with me was the lion and tiger show. I love lions and tigers. Just watch this if you question my affection.
What the circus showed me was sad. Somewhere along the way these lions forgot the important advice of Mufassa. The tigers and lions were accepting orders from a ring master in sparkling purple pants. No one should ever have to take orders from a man in purple pants. I quickly found myself rooting for the inner simba to wake up and maul purple pants man’s face off. Instead the lions and tigers went about their tricks which included patiently waiting and moving from one stool to another stool occasionally they would jump over one another to the amazement of few.
This reminded me of a C.S Lewis quote about people:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
What C.S. Lewis is saying here is we forget who we are. We become far to easily pleased and suddenly our life exists primarily around moving from one trick to another all aimed at amazement and wonder from an audience.
We settle for less than we were meant to live for.
What bothered me was the lion was meant for much more than a life filled with orders from purple pants man. He was an apex predator that had seen his life hit rock bottom. There is nothing more rock bottom than taking orders from a man in sequenced purple pants.
We as humans are the same way.
Meant to serve a larger purpose.
We often forget this and settle for momentary things that offer instant pleasure and affirmation but yet shield us from what and who we are meant to be.