One of the most compelling old skool songs that I like to listen to comes from the Spinners, “Love Don’t Love Nobody”. Somehow we get the impression that love has an obligation to never hurt us or fail us- that simply because we feel it, that those feelings alone should be enough to keep us through every challenge in life together. And that if love between us and somebody else does not work, then something must be wrong with love.
The song tells no lie. Love don’t love nobody. Love is an instrument- a tool. It doesn’t care about how it is used. Just like the old saying, guns don’t kill people- people kill people. A lot of times we play around with love like a loaded weapon. We don’t mean to pull the trigger or to harm anybody but we fail to respect the damage it can do when held in undisciplined hands.
Love will let you love anybody. Love will let you compromise everything you believe in. Love will let you make a fool of yourself. Love will let you love somebody more than you love yourself. Love will let you get beat up within an inch of your life. Love will let you believe your life is not worth living without a certain person. Love will let you give up your whole life so somebody can live off your work.
Just like a gun can be used for justice or for murder- love loves nothing about how you use it; and love don’t love nobody. It is only about how and why you CHOOSE to use love that makes the USE of love something that is good or bad.
Do you hijack people with love? Do you rob people with love? Do you make people guilty with love? Do you smother people with love? How much time do you practice loving yourself before trying it on others? And what are your rules of engagement?
Are your standards for giving love the same as your standards for receiving it? And if that is indeed the case, then why are you having problems with love? It’s a perfectly good tool when used it the right hands.
You see the reason it takes a fool to learn that love don’t love nobody is because we keep fooling ourselves into believing the problem with love is everybody but the person we are looking at in the mirror. We get into relationships and hand out love like a loaded weapon to a 2 year old then wonder how we got shot.
Don’t blame the bullet. Don’t blame the gun. Don’t blame the person with the poor aim. The moment you see love being mishandled or taken for granted and fail to check your judgment or the qualification of the other person, love will make it do what it do- and like a stray bullet at a drive by shooting, it will, sooner or later- take someone out. ■