I love a good old cliché me (did you see what I did there?!). I also love the word 'futile', much as I love to say 'preposterous', in a slightly spitting, outraged way. I think that resistance is futile insofar as Valentine's Day is concerned. When I wrote The Creative Times last week, I said that I adore the fine aesthetic of pink and red and hearts and I was not being ironic. Then, of course, if you, like me, like this day (I like the whole week, actually), you probably have to fend off plentiful naysayers. I find them quite, quite amusing dear reader. In fact, I think that the raging anti-Valentine's Day, anti-Christmas, anti-kids, anti-animals, anti-shopping, anti-fattening foods people really ought to spend some quality time in a Communist country.
When I was much younger, I did think that V-Day was all about romantic love. Certainly, that's the way it's pedalled. By the time I was fourteen however, I had embraced it big time. Cards would be made (or bought), and sent far and wide (ah, another nice cliché I love...), to teachers, friends, family members and pets. The other day I was sitting in my lab (read, my dining room, except the table has been entirely appropriated as a working table), making an extra-large lavender sachet with a red heart stitched in buttons. This passion just never goes away.
But then, as I was sewing away, I also thought of some other aspect of love: the passion for what we do. Ever heard of, find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life? That's Confucius if I remember correctly. Well, I think the guy was certainly right, too bad that knowing ourselves is hard and to know what we love is the hardest part of all. I know of authors (not just 'authors', but bona fide published-writers-with-agents) who jacked it in because the whole publishing machine was too much to bear and because what were promised sales never quite materialised themselves in the way they expected. Did they not love their work enough? Or are all our passions fleeting in life and what seems so vital today won't be that important next year?
I cannot imagine my life without writing. This isn't just because I have been writing for the past twenty-five odd years but because it defines my identity more than any other facet of my personality, much more than my past, education, upbringing, choices and views. There is nothing else like writing in my life and I guess that when I think about this day, what I really think about are the countless (and beautiful) love poems and letters and stories that I like to re-read almost every February. I never quite see them as testament to the love for a woman (Keats's letters, for example), but as one to the love of writing. And yes, I am currently reading The Pursuit of Love, but I have no intention to talk about it today. However, it's pink and it says 'love' on the cover and so it seemed like a fitting image for this lovely day.
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