root of (most)(all) evil

I've come to believe, that love, not money green papered money, is the root of most, if not all evil. As children, after learning to say Mama and Dada, the first phrase to which we're taught is I love you. Not I'm hungry, I'm wet, or sleepy, or even the infamous 'leave me alone', but, I love you. It was one of the first phrases I tried my damnest to teach my now two year old sister. She only began to grasp and repeat it this year, but since her first utterances, I drilled this three word, three syllable phrase into her ever growing and expanding vocabulary.

Even as children, we correlate love with hugs and kisses, with holding of hands and grasping of calves. We understand and understood then, that there is something simplistically difficult about this word, this action, this phrase. We realize as children, with a very limited vocabulary, that my responsibility, is to comprehend exactly what love is.

The reasons we're taught and teach this phrase can only be one of two reasons; either to embrace it or avoid it - at all costs.

Most of my writing is about love and my mishaps with it. Most poets write about love and their desires for it. Most celebrity blogs dramatize it. We search for jobs that we love. Blushing brides search for that gown to which they love. Teachers take measly salaries for their love of the job. Women endure, whether out of stupidity or not, because of love. We make love and make babies out of this love. We open our eyes daily because some higher power loved us that much to keep us. And some of us, don't open our eyes and succumb to death because some higher power loved us enough to take us away.

Everything we do and everything we search for, is for and because of love.

At some point in our lives, love does us wrong, does us raw, and skins us alive. Love, as merciless as it feels, and at times it is, at particular and certain points in our lives, is like the summer's wasp. With sealed lids, it functions off and out of sheer emotion, and sometimes, blindly enters into realms and situations that are no good for it, places that could end its existence. But love, like the wasp, moves rapidly. It doesn't budge or shake like the bee when swat at; doesn't die immediately when hit either. Love, stands alone and by itself.

I remember being a young teenage girl, along with my best friends and school peers, sharing stories and tales about what we thought then was love. Love then, didn't require trial and error; love then, were mere experimentations, tests, to see if we, as girls, were ready. The irony in it all, is that even now as women, our emotions and reactions to the real thing tend to be as gentle and succulent as our then 16 years old girl hearts were.

Love, is the only emotion, that keeps trying. That is forever enduring and growing. Love, is the only emotion that transcends time and species. Love, is the only emotion that attempts to be all-knowing, but is also, the only emotion that is ever present.

And even though I personally believe, in my heart of hearts that love, not that money green papered money, is the root of most, if not all evil, I for one, will continue to conquer and perfect it. I, will continue to practice and critique it. I, have and will continue to evolve because of love.

It is an evil after all that is necessary.

"Love has no awareness of merit or demerit; it has no scale by which its portion may be weighed or measured. It does not seek to balance giving and receiving. Love loves; this is its nature".

Howard Thurman, Meditations of the Heart, 1953

Hear My Call

Jill Scott

performance from 41st Annual NAACP Awards